Alumni game celebrates 20 years of soccer

It’s been 20 years since Michele Zentz (formerly Badilla-Gesek) stepped onto the turf at Grouse Mountain Fields as a member of the first Whitefish Lady Bulldog soccer team. Next month, she’ll pull on her vintage white and green jersey one more time.

Former soccer players from both Whitefish and Columbia Falls high schools who played between 1992 and 2012 will take to the pitch July 1 and battle for the inaugural North Valley Cup. The summer soccer event is the brainchild of Whitefish boys soccer coach O’Brien Byrd and is sponsored by the Flathead Rapids. He calls the reunion event a “festival and jamboree.”

 “It’s celebrating our history,” he said. “Twenty years of soccer in the North Valley.”

Whitefish and Columbia Falls high schools both added soccer to their roster of sports in 1992. From what Zentz remembers about those early teams, “We were terrible.”

Back then the league included AA teams like Bozeman, Helena Capital, Helena High, Missoula Hellgate, Missoula Sentinel, Missoula Big Sky and Flathead. Columbia Falls and Whitefish were the only two A teams and it wasn’t until 2001 when the Class A schools formed their own league.

Zentz remembers one match in particular with Bozeman when a Whitefish defender caught the ball with her hands and punted it down the field.

“I was just mortified,” Zentz recalled. “But somehow we always eked into the state competition.”

Zentz said she learned some valuable lessons about how to lose gracefully during those first seasons with the Lady Bulldogs, which helped shape a successful soccer career going forward. She went on to play with the University of Montana Lady Griz, with the Seattle Sounders womens team and later coached at Boise State.

Soccer in the North Valley has come a long way since the early 1990s. Between Whitefish and Columbia Falls, an astounding 10 state champions have been captured by the boys and girls teams. The rival clubs have met three times in the finals, and the regular season head-to-head matches have almost always been season highlights.

Former Bulldog and Wildcat players are traveling from as far away as Seattle, Portland and Denver to participate in the alumni games. And while the event is all for fun, the heated rivalry between the two schools is sure to bring out the competitive spirit in all involved.

“People are already talking trash,” Byrd said about a few of the players who have signed on to play.

Zentz recalls the rivalry from her days on the pitch.

“It was always a big deal,” she said. “Especially for me since my parents moved from Columbia Falls to Whitefish when I was in eighth grade. I was tagged as the trader.” 

“But it was a healthy rivalry. We pushed each other to be better teams.”

She says the alumni game will be more fun than anything, “but once we start playing, those competitive feelings will rear their head. It’s a conditioned response.”

Tyler Stanley, a 2004 graduate from Columbia Falls, will suit up for the Wildcat alumni. His teams won the state title twice, in 2001 and again in 2003 in an epic showdown against Whitefish that went into overtime.

“Those rivalry games were pretty intense,” Stanley said. “It was the biggest game of the year. We were pretty well matched back then.”

He expects the alumni game to be competitive, “but all in good fun.”

Stanley went on to play with Shippensburg University and Robert Morris University in Pennsylvania. He currently plays with the Flathead Rapids premiere soccer club.

Former Wildkat kicker Nicolette Bales graduated from Columbia Falls in 1998. She says the North Valley Cup will be a great chance to see some old faces and possibly get some overdue revenge on the Lady Bulldogs.

“I’m super excited to play,” Bales said. “Of course I want to beat Whitefish. When I was there we never beat them.”

Byrd finds himself in a tricky situation for the alumni game. While he is the current and longtime coach at Whitefish, he also happens to be a 1995 Columbia Falls graduate who played on the inaugural Wildcat soccer team. He’ll suit up in red and blue to coach the Columbia Falls men.

Meanwhile, Peter Browne, the current and longtime Columbia Falls boys coach, will lead the Whitefish mens alumni team. Browne coached the first Whitefish boys team in 1992 and played on the Whitefish adult league teams in the 1980s.

Greg Trenerry will coach the Columbia Falls womens alumni and Lini Reading will coach the Whitefish women. Reading led the Lady Bulldogs for 15 seasons and, along with Richard Atkinson, played an integral role in starting girls soccer in the North Valley.

“They did a ton to get the program on its feet and get the ball rolling,” Zentz said.

Reading recalls that after a couple of tough years in the beginning, the Whitefish girls soccer program started to take off. The Lady Bulldogs eventually went on a tear, winning the conference six years in a row.

Reading remembers the first Class A title game in 2001 between Whitefish and Columbia Falls as a true dog and cat fight. Whitefish won the match 1-0, but it was anybody’s game, she recalls.

“In those rival games, it was never about who was better on paper,” she said. “Statistics never mattered. It was all about who wanted it more and who had the psychological edge.”

The North Valley Cup also includes boys and girls games featuring current high school players, at 10 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., respectively. Later in the evening the Flathead Rapids womens team will play the University of Montana Lady Griz alumni at 5 p.m., and the Flathead Rapids mens team will face off against the Sandpoint Green Monarchs at 7 p.m.

The womens alumni game is set for 1 p.m., and the men play at 3 p.m.

Former players can still register for the alumni games. Cost is $25 and the roster is capped at 20 for each team. Visit www.flatheadrapids.com for more information.