GREAT FALLS — Frontier Conference football coaches met at the Great Falls Holiday Inn on Tuesday for the league’s annual media day. All of the Frontier coaches except Rocky Mountain College’s Jason Petrino were in attendance and each gave a speech about their team’s outlook heading into this season.
Petrino did not attend the event as he was with family. Petrino’s uncle Bob, the former Hall of Fame coach of Carroll College, passed away earlier in the week.
The coaches were optimistic toward the upcoming season.
“It’s awesome. Look at the legendary coaches here, look at the support — you see the media that shows up for this conference. To me, that just shows how important football is, not only to this state but also to this conference,” said first-year MSU-Northern coach Andrew Rolin. “I think it’s a build-up going into fall camp, and we’ve kind of been chomping at the bit as we are anxious about getting going here this Saturday and Sunday. But this kind of ramps it up a little bit.”
“Maybe we’ll play with a little bit of a chip on our shoulder. When you’ve had success like we’ve had and you’ve been at Carroll College, even in the coach Bob Petrino years, you feel like you can walk out with those helmets and things will fall into place,” said Carroll head coach Mike Van Diest. “We’ve got to get back to the toughness that Carroll College is noted for and perform week in and week out.”
The Frontier Conference also release its coaches poll with defending champion Southern Oregon topping the poll with six first-place votes. The complete 2018 Frontier Conference Coaches Preseason Poll is listed below (first-place votes in parenthese).
1. Southern Oregon (6) – 48 points
2. Rocky Mountain (1) – 39 points
T3. College of Idaho – 30 points
T3. Montana Tech – 30 points
5. Carroll College (1) – 28 points
6. Eastern Oregon – 27 points
7. Montana Western – 15 points
8. MSU-Northern – 7 points
