HELENA — For the second straight Tuesday, Helena Capital football players heard wise words from a former University of Montana head football coach.
Mick Dennehy won a national championship while serving as offensive coordinator at Montana. Then Dennehy won three Big Sky Conference titles in four years as Montana’s head coach in the late 1990s before leaving to coach at Utah State.
“Your education is a hell of a lot more important than playing a game,” said Dennehy while addressing the Bruins at their practice Tuesday afternoon. “Because of the impact on what you’re going to do for the rest of your life.”
The previous Tuesday, former Griz head coach Mick Delaney addressed this same Bruins team.
“Well, I think it’s important for them to be exposed to certain people,” said Capital head coach Kyle Mihelish. “Leaders in our community and leaders in Montana and leaders, quite frankly, in the country — our football communities.”
But what lessons did the Capital players take away from Dennehy’s talk?
“What I took away from him is you've got to stay hungry,” said senior safety Ryan Martinie. “You've got to want to go into the game. You;ve got to want to win. And you have to execute on all three phases of the game.”
Fellow Capital senior Dylan Almquist narrowed in on another part of Dennehy’s talk.
“I mean, a big thing he talked about was mental toughness,” said Almquist. “And I think as someone who’s been a part of championship-winning teams — and a lot of great teams — he knows a lot about that.”
When the Class AA football playoffs begin next week, Capital will be the Western conference's top seed regardless of the outcome of the Bruins' regular-season finale Friday against Butte. But many Bruins players said that thought only motivates them to keep pushing forward.
“Locking up the 1 seed, it means a lot,” said Martinie. “But we still have a couple games to play. And we've just got to go out there and stay focused and work hard and finish it. Finish the job. Get it done.”
Almquist also shared a sense of urgency.
“It’s obviously nice to get the bye and (that) gives us some confidence, but we can’t get complacent,” he said. “There’s a lot of other good teams in this state, and if we take a day off, someone could catch up to us.”
