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Big Sandy completed the girls' basketball season without a win but finished with a flourish in the final contest of 2021. The Pioneers (0-14) took the long road Wednesday to Hays-Lodgepole and produced a more fruitful effort than their regular season finale generated four nights earlier at home. "We didn't let the press kill us quite like it did when we played them in Big Sandy," Pioneers coach Pete Jerrel said. "We calmed down ... we trusted each other to make some plays." The Thunderbirds...
HAVRE - Big Sandy did not get to resume the role of lovable, scrappy underdog in a run to the divisional boys' basketball tournament in Great Falls as understudy Chester-Joplin-Inverness upstaged the Pioneers in the District 9C consolation semifinal. The Pioneers were the "Cinderella" story last March but became the first victim of the upset-minded sixth-seed Hi-Line Hawks in a tournament that had gone chalk all week until Friday afternoon's showdown at the Blue Pony Corral. C-J-I's Kyle Harmon...
Big Sandy boys basketball coach Thomas Dilworth has been preaching the same message all season to his young squad and the Pioneers looked ready Saturday night to don their choir robes in response. Be playing your best basketball come tournament time. Big Sandy undoubtedly produced its most dominant effort all year in the regular season finale, as 11 Pioneers made it into the scorebook en route to an 88-54 win against Hays-Lodgepole. Sophomores Braydon Cline and Kody Strutz each poured in 23...
The Big Sandy girls concluded a winless regular season Saturday on the hardwood but went out with their best offensive production over the course of a weekend. The Pioneers have had to battle to eclipse the 30-point mark this season but hit it Friday in a 64-30 defeat at District 9C power Turner. In a balanced offensive effort, every player who got on the court for Big Sandy scored. Eva Wagoner led the way with 8 points, followed by Jaihven Baumman with 6, Madison Terry with 5, Angie Sant with...
Big Sandy wrestlers are beating their foes on the mat but the toughest test may be the injury bug as superdivisionals loom. “We are a little banged up right now,” said Tucker Taylor, the head coach of the Fort Benton-Big Sandy coop program. Taylor said senior Bayley Genereux and freshman Reinhard Bold were each nursing ankle injuries by the end of last week. Genereux got hurt earlier in the week but had returned to the mat to compete by Thursday’s mixer in Fort Benton. Taylor said in his second match of the night, Genereux defeated an oppon...
Check "season series sweep" off the to-do list for the Big Sandy boys after a 68-55 win Saturday against North Star in varsity basketball. The Pioneers moved to 4-7 with their first home-and-away sweep of a District 9C foe. The opportunity remains open to do the same against Turner in Friday's rematch on the road. On "Parents' Night," when graduating seniors in particular were honored, Kade Strutz fittingly led Big Sandy with 22 points. The year-end celebration bumped up as Saturday's home final...
Better foes outmatched the Big Sandy girls on the basketball court on Friday and Saturday as the difficult 2021 season winds down. The Pioneers fell 79-24 on Friday at Box Elder and 65-8 to North Star on Saturday at home. The visit to the Bears represented one of the better offensive outputs this season for Big Sandy. "We came out a little scared," Pioneers coach Pete Jerrel said, as the Pioneer girls struggled against the Bears' 2-2-1 full-court press and superior height. "After we settled...
Big Sandy High School wrestlers get one opportunity a year to perform in front of a home crowd and let the light shine on their efforts. The Pioneers, accordingly, made a grand entrance Thursday evening. "This year, we did the walkout," said senior Bayley Genereux. "That was fun. Having the home crowd here, that's nice. It gets you a little more adrenaline going." Genereux has staked out a 14-7 record in his final season, aiming to get back to the state tournament and get a win after appearing...
The Big Sandy girls displayed the essence of Pioneer spirit in playing their most complete basketball game of the season Saturday on the heels of arguably their most difficult one. The Pioneers posted their best offensive output of the season against visiting Chinook. They cracked the 30-point barrier for the first time with almost two and a half minutes still to play in regulation as Amy Gasvoda sank a hook shot. The Sugarbeeters still won, 66-33. Yet the young Pioneers’ team could point to some crucial baby steps that indicate advancement i...
The regular season in District 9C boys basketball has clearly become a two-team race for the top seed to the tournament followed by six teams that really could knock any of the others off on any given night. Big Sandy wants to emerge in the league's upper half and took an important step in that direction Friday with a thrilling 58-57 win at Chester-Joplin-Inverness. The Pioneers (3-6) thus avenged a 15-point loss at home to the Hi-Line Hawks earlier in the season. The win gave notice neither CJI...
The high school wrestlers from Big Sandy are on a roll. That’s good timing, coming into the week in which they will get their one chance for the year to compete in their home gym. A trio of Pioneers, combining with Fort Benton as a coop team, competed in Conrad on Friday and Shelby on Saturday. The joint squad had a scheduled match Tuesday after press time in Lewistown. They will next hit the mat at 6 p.m. Thursday for their only home meet of the season. Bayley Genereux and Brady Pleninger will be honored as graduating seniors with a special pr...
With dos consecutive wins, the Big Sandy boys could make a case for being the most interesting basketball team in the world. They don't always have a size advantage, but when they do ... The Pioneers put up plenty of points in the paint to punish visiting Turner on Friday, prevailing 70-61. Outscoring their foes down low 48-26, Big Sandy capitalized on a 40-27 rebounding advantage that included almost a 2-to-1 edge on the offensive glass. Fresh off a win at North Star, the Pioneers' final tilt...
The Big Sandy girls returned to their home floor Friday night coming off their best offensive performance of the season in the friendly confines. Unfortunately, matched with the Turner Tornadoes, ranked fourth in the state in Class C by 406MTSports.com and blemished only by a loss to No. 1-ranked Fort Benton, the Pioneers produced their lowest output of the season in their latest home outing. Big Sandy fell to 0-6 on the year as the towering Tornadoes, paced by 20 points from 6-feet, 1-inch...
The Pioneer boys produced their first win of 2021 when they went on the road Saturday to North Star. Big Sandy bested the boys from Rudyard 52-45 in an afternoon tilt to get the monkey off their back and try to spark a run through the last three opponents they had yet to face in the District 9C this season. The Pioneers (1-4) complete their first go-round through the league slate with a 6:30 Friday tipoff against Turner before traveling Saturday to Hays-Lodgepole. Both teams are beneath Big...
Big Sandy produced its most prolific offensive output of the season Friday but it was not enough as the Pioneers fell 76-29 to Box Elder in girls basketball. The Pioneers went on the road Saturday and were downed 70-14 by North Star. Facing the Bears at home, Big Sandy spotted their guests a 21-0 lead, missing about a dozen shots before getting one to fall. "We shot five times from 2 feet on our first (possession) of the game and couldn't get one of them to go," said Pioneers coach Pete Jerrel....
Cheerleading began fashionably late this school year but has been fashionable as of late. The Big Sandy Pioneers boast a six-girl squad this winter sports season after a fall hiatus. The cheer crew were largely busy in autumn playing volleyball. Returning squad members are Amaya Edwards, Jozlyn Baumann and Haley Schwenke. Tavie Wortman, Kodi-Jo Phillips and Teagan Cochran are newer additions. The girls donned aloha-themed duds for "Hawaiian Night" at the last basketball home game Friday. "We're...
The Big Sandy Pioneers are contributing twice as many wrestlers in 2021 to their co-op squad with Fort Benton as they did in a successful season a year ago. The Fort Benton/Big Sandy combined team earned third place in the state at the Class C level, with Bayley Genereux representing Big Sandy at the state meet in the 138-pound division. Genereux returns as a senior, wrestling up to 145 pounds this season, along with Tannin Baumann, a sophomore hoping to earn his own spot at state at 132 pounds...
With back-to-back three-pointers from Pioneers young (freshman Lane Demontiney) and old (senior Kade Strutz), Big Sandy halved what had once been a 20-point deficit against visiting Chinook-Joplin-Inverness as about three minutes remained in Friday's boys basketball tilt. Pioneer fans could perhaps smell a whiff of what became the team's signature dish in 2020: a comeback special. Freshman Wylee Snapp got that familiar sense. Snapp scored the Pioneers' final 8 points of the second quarter in...
Big Sandy faced perhaps its most frustrating league foe Friday in the form of the Chester-Joplin-Inverness Hi-Line Hawks. Two years ago, the Pioneer girls came up short by two points twice against CJI. Last season, the Hawks edged Big Sandy in overtime in Liberty County. This time around, a CJI team filled with returning talent took advantage of a young Big Sandy squad and prevailed comfortably, 67-20. The matchup looked destined for another nail-biting finish after the first quarter. Lainey...
In a sense, Big Sandy boys' basketball is picking up just where it left off. The Pioneers faced Fort Benton with a divisional title and state playoff berth on the line in their penultimate game of 2020, so why not start off with the Longhorns to tip off 2021? Unfortunately, the season opener Saturday in the Pioneers' home gym ended with Big Sandy on the wrong end of the final score again. The Longhorns were the only District 9C foe the Pioneers never solved last season and they found them just...
There are no easy games in the District 9C, as the Big Sandy girls have found out again and again on the hardwood in recent years. Though there are somewhat less challenging games than those against the Fort Benton Longhorns, who came up north and began their redemption tour Saturday. The lone blemish in a 24-1 season in 2020 left them out of the state playoffs and Fort Benton is determined not to be denied this time. The Longhorns, led by MSU-Billings commit Aspen Giese, a senior, made quick...
Raw talent more accustomed to rubber mats than a rubber ball refined its way to a respectable season on the hardwood in junior high boys’ basketball at Big Sandy. First-year coach Katie Nicholson led a team loaded with athleticism that finished just shy of .500 ball despite little experience in the game. With Little Guy wrestling postponed until after the New Year, the hoops team took shape in the form of a lot of wrestlers keeping in shape for that sport. “This is just a group of kids who are just really good athletes,:” Nicholson said. “Our...
It took a fair amount of scheduling gymnastics to permit Big Sandy to complete a full junior high girls basketball season in 2020. The Pioneers proved able to defeat nearly every opponent they faced, COVID-19 included. The pandemic forced last-minute cancelations left and right but the purple and gold chased down games wherever they could be found. “(Athletic Director) Melanie Schwarzbach did an amazing job getting us games for a (full) season,” Pioneers coach Travis Baumann said. “Parents were great about it … nobody wanted a six-game junior h...
The observance of Thanksgiving Day felt appropriately simple to me this year. I write this, however, with the caveat that I cooked nothing for the turkey dinner. Those who devoted hours to their bird and/or its tabletop companions may have seen their mileage vary in the simplicity department. So did, perhaps, others who tangled with technology to expand their gathering virtually, relying on Zoom, FaceTime, Skype and other apps to videostream loved ones from afar into their gathering. A blessing when they behave, these digital connection tools...
It's not quite the bustling holiday season but Big Sandy is already toiling away at vanquishing the Ghosts of Postseasons Past. The first specter appeared against a backdrop of powdery white in the form of the 2018 6-Man football champs and last year's runner-up, the Wibaux Longhorns. The Longhorns proved just a phantom of their former selves, however, and left Big Sandy with a 57-6 defeat to conclude an uncharacteristic 2-4 season. It's not that they didn't know what was coming at them. They ju...
