Coach Mac chalks up one more

By The Standard Staff - 01/09/2008

Coach McElroy guided his football team to a state championship this last season.

Of course, we’re talking about Curt McElroy, brother of former Butte High coach Jon McElroy, and his team is the Tonopah Muckers in the Nevada 1A league.

In his fourth season with the Muckers, McElroy guided the squad to its first-ever state football title. Tonopah also played in the state championship game last season, but came up short.

Tonopah, a silver mining town about halfway between Las Vegas and Reno, beat six-time state champ Carlin 54-20 on Nov. 17 for the title. It was Tonopah High’s first state title since the basketball team won in 1954.

McElroy, a former Butte Bulldog and Montana Grizzly linebacker, completed his 23rd season as a coach with the title win.

“This feels great,” McElroy told the Reno Gazette-Journal. “I told the team we would be here all year long.” McElroy’s Mucker teams are 22-9 in four seasons and have won three consecutive Central Division regular-season titles. He teaches Government, U.S. history and weight training.

Does anyone know if his name has been added to the rumor-mill list of possible new head coaches See CHAULKS, Page B5 at Butte High?

Holiday wrestling The holiday break is kind of a different time in the Butte High wrestling room.

Or at least it was when I was there umpteen years ago. There’s no competition on the horizon for the athletes, and coaches have some quality time to drill concepts into the wrestlers’ heads.

The cool part — 20 years ago, anyway — was that many former Bulldog wrestlers came back to the old wrestling room in sweats and tennis shoes and helped work out with the current crop of athletes.

I remember Tom Konen coming in and throttling me at practice my senior year. As the varsity heavyweight, I was usually able to hold my own against anyone at practice. Not so with the Montana 1979 state heavyweight champ in the room. He was way out of my class.

Speaking with Coach Street recently, I offered to wrestle with the big boys at the holiday practices.

“We don’t have any big boys,” Street reminded me.

Since then, however, sophomore Cody Hass has had a cast removed from his hand, and he has seen his first action of the season at heavyweight. Not a minute too soon.

The Bulldogs are at the Jug Beck Rocky Mountain Invitational this coming weekend. Coach Street says this meet signals the beginning of the end of the season, as the Eastern AA seeding tournament is only three weeks later.

More than two decades of very high expectations make it tough for coaches, fans and wrestlers to take a less-than-stellar season, but the Bulldogs are improving, and Street usually finds a way to help his wrestlers bring out their best when it matters most.

It’s coming quicker than you think.

— Pat Ryan writes a column that appears here Wednesdays. Contact him at 496-5570 or Pat.Ryan@mtstandard.com