Our Favorite Sports Stories of 2024 – Flathead Beacon

There’s no shortage of sports talent in northwest Montana, and 2024 served as another reminder that our regional community of athletes can compete at every level. From state championships, to international trophies, it was another great year for area sports fans. As we reach the final frame of 2024, and prepare to kickoff 2025, here’s a look at some of our favorite sports stories from the past year.

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Libby Grad and Pro Golfer Ryggs Johnston Wins Australian Open Golf Tournament

The win earned him a $209,000 payout, and moved him up more than 600 spots in the World Golf Rankings

Ryggs Johnston, a 24-year-old professional golfer and 2019 graduate of Libby High School, won the 107^th Australian Open golf tournament last weekend with a score of 269.

That finish of 18 strokes under par gave him a three-stroke margin of victory to edge out Australian golfer Curtis Luck. Over the course of the four-day competition, formally dubbed the ISPS Handa Australian Open, Johnston finished with scores of 65-68-68-68.

Read the rest of the story here.

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International Inglefinger

Whitefish senior Maeve Ingelfinger is on a meteoric trajectory as a Nordic skier and will represent the U.S. at a series of races in Sweden next week

On Thursday afternoon in Whitefish, temperatures were plummeting to the negatives, bolstered by high winds that prompted school, business and ski resort closures. Warnings for motorists to stay off the roads and for pedestrians to avoid exposure to the arctic air circulated but didn’t hold much sway for 17-year-old Maeve Ingelfinger.

Read the rest of the story here.

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Braves Claim All-Class State Relay Records

Over two days of competition in Great Falls, Flathead Valley’s Class AA athletes put on a track and field clinic against the best in the state, coming away with numerous individual and relay titles, state records and a second-place trophy for the Braves

Flathead High School athletes powered through windy conditions on the first day of competition in Great Falls on Friday, May 24 to take a commanding lead in the team scores. The Braves were unable to hold off Gallatin High School over the final three events on Saturday, but finished second as a team, the highest placement for the program since a runner-up finish in 2018. The highlight for the Braves, who scored just five points at the state meet in 2021, came with a pair of relay victories that broke all-class state records.

Read the rest of the story here.

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Whitefish Grad Walburn Competes in NCAA Championships

Washington State University senior Lee Walburn finished the first day of the decathlon in 11th place

Decathlete Lee Walburn, a Whitefish High School graduate, finished the first day of competition at the NCAA Track and Field Championships in 11th place. Walburn, who attended Carroll College for two years winning back-to-back NAIA national championships in the 10-discipline event, transferred to Washington State University for his final two years of college eligibility. He qualified for the NCAA Championships, which kicked off on Wednesday with the first half of the decathlon.

Read the rest of the story here.

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Brock Osweiler Hosts Flathead Football Camp for Second Year

The Flathead High School graduate, who had a seven-year career in the NFL, continues giving back to the local community

When Caleb Aland took over as head football coach for Flathead High School in 2022, he knew he wanted to connect the best of Braves past with the current athletes in the community. One name came to mind: Brock Osweiler. Osweiler, who was inducted into the Montana Football Hall of Fame last month, graduated from Flathead High in 2009 and matriculated to Arizona State University where he he set numerous records as the starting quarterback. In the second round of the 2012 NFL draft, the Denver Broncos selected him as the 57^th pick, starting a seven-year career in the professional league.

Read the rest of the story here.

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The Last Best Boulderers

In 2023, Gus Cox climbed to the top of Montana’s competitive youth bouldering circuit with a perfect score in the Last Best Bouldering Series. He did it with a little help from his friends and family.

Standing on a crash pad in the middle of RockFish Climbing Gym, Gus Cox surveys the 14-foot-high overhanging wall looming above him with intense focus, not to puzzle out his own bouldering problem but to monitor a teammate’s progress.

“Yeah Pita!” he shouts as Guadalupe Chentnik, aka “Pita,” explodes off the wall in a “dyno” — a term that’s short for “dynamic,” and which climbers use to describe a leaping move from one hold to the next — and sticks the sequence. 

Read the rest of the story here.

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The Buck Doesn’t Stop Here

Flathead Valley running phenom and Olympic Marathon Trials hopeful Collin Buck has positioned himself as an unstoppable force as he heads to the nation’s most competitive proving ground

On a Sunday morning in November of 2022, Kalispell resident Collin Buck ran around Whitefish in the pre-dawn darkness. With a few weeks to go before his first marathon, Buck was doing a workout designed to roughly simulate what the 26.2-mile race would feel like. It was a grueling prescription of 5-kilometer repeats — fivetotal — made more difficult by a constant wind and below-freezing temperatures.

Buck pushed through the conditions long after his three companions pulled the plug on their own workouts. He averaged 5:23-minute-per-mile pace per interval, just a hair over 16-minutes for each 5k.

Read the rest of the story here.

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DREAM Adaptive Recreation Dreams Big with New Headquarters and Operational Center on Big Mountain

A major donation by the Lesar family is the first step toward the construction of the nonprofit organization’s new slopeside facility

Julie Tickle has several distinct memories from her first summer working as a program coordinator for DREAM Adaptive Recreation in 2017. One memory takes place at Whitefish’s City Beach, where Tickle was organizing an accessible paddle program for DREAM participants. A local Whitefish resident, philanthropist and former Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar, was out for his morning walk when he stopped Tickle and asked her what she was doing.

Read the rest of the story here.

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The Soul of Spirit Skate Shop

Despite enduring the pitfalls of growing old in tandem with a subculture that first gained mainstream prominence a half-century ago, Clay Taylor, the 58-year-old owner of Montana’s last best hard-goods skate shop in downtown Kalispell, is living the dream

Perched on a stool behind the counter at Spirit Skate Shop in downtown Kalispell, Clay Taylor’s foot is swaddled in bandages but his passion for skateboarding is as enduring as it was when he was a teenager in 1970s southern California, haunting his mailbox for the latest issue of “Thrasher” magazine and hopping fences to ride the kidney-shaped contours of desiccated swimming pools during the worst drought in the state’s history.

Read the rest of the story here.

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Wolfpack Back to Back

Glacier boys earn Class AA state golf title, girls medalist honors decided in double playoff

As a windstorm whipped through the Flathead Valley, knocking over push carts and generally causing havoc across Northern Pines Golf Club, the top two Class AA girls golfers teed off on their last hole.

And then teed off on another last hole. And another.

Read the rest of the story here.