Chris Peterson
Havre Daily News
cpeterson@havredailynews.com
Fifty years is how long the Havre
High girls tennis team has had to wait to
get its first state championship.
But after waiting 50 years for something,
when you finally get it, it’s pretty
sweet. On May 26 in Polson, the Blue
Ponies ended that drought by scoring 26
points, easily defeating second-place
Whitefish, Class A defending state champion
Dillon, which finished third.
“It’s a pretty awesome feeling,” HHS
senior Steph Flatau said. “It’s nice to
finally get it because we have come so
close during the last few years and we
have worked so hard to get here.”
While, the Havre High boys tennis
team was in the midst of one of the
greatest runs in Montana tennis history,
winning six consecutive state championships,
the HHS girls team was plugging
along, getting a little better each
year. And each year the Ponies kept
inching closer to their ultimate goal of
becoming state champions.
“This is something that has been
building for a while, and it is something
that I have felt really strongly about
since I got here in 2004,” HHS head
coach George Ferguson said. “We have
had a lot of good girls teams over the
past two decades, and a lot of great players
like Karly Myers, Terri Sherill and
Amy McLain, to name a few . But for
whatever reason, it just didn’t happen
until this year. So I kind of feel like this
championship was for every girl that has
played here, and everyone who has
coached the girls team before. It is that
important and that special to our program.”
Leading up to their 2006 state championship,
the Ponies had a number of close
calls and near misses as they finished
fourth in 2003, third in 2004, second in
2005 before the Ponies finally broke
through two weeks ago. In doing so, they
were able to steal away some of that
spotlight that has shined so brightly on
the boy’s program for the last seven
years.
“It felt really good to win because we
have kind of been behind the guys for
such a long time,” sophomore Katie
Mariani said. “It’s not that we didn’t
want the boys team to win because we
did. We wanted to come away with two
state titles, but it still feels good that we
were finally able to win one and take
some of the spotlight away from the
boys team.”
At the outset of the 2006 tennis season
not many people looked at the Havre
High girls tennis team and saw a state
championship caliber team. They had
come so close the year before, but a lot
of their key players were gone including
one of the best individual players in the
history of girls tennis at Havre High in
Amy McLain, who now plays tennis for
Montana State University-Billings..
But, as the season wore on it looked
more and more like this team had what
it took to win. The Ponies did well
against a very difficult schedule, and
even though people outside of Havre
might not have been taking notice, the
Ponies knew they were good enough to
win, and it was just a matter of going
out and getting the job done.
“I’ve known all season long that we
had a good enough team to win,”
Ferguson said. “I thought we had the
best overall team at state last year. But
we have found out that the best team
only wins some of the time. It is a matter
of timing, how the draws shape up,
and how you’re playing going into the
second day of the tournament. I thought
we were the best team in the state when
we got to Polson , and this time it
worked out where the best team in the
field actually won.”
At the Central A Divisional tournament,
the Ponies dominated. They won
their third consecutive Central A title
and they qualified eight girls for state,
including two singles players, Katie
Mariani and Hope Hedges, as well as
three doubles teams, Kari Gorder and
Kristi Hollingshead, Flatau and Keelie
Solomon and Alexa Lipp and Karissa
Olsen.
At the state tournament, points are
earned for every match that is won, so it
was important that Havre had qualified
so many players. A lot of times when a
team wins a state championship it has
maybe one or two standout players that
win a lot of matches and rack up nearly
all of the team’s points.
Well that was not the case with the
Ponies. While, the doubles team of Lipp
and Olsen placed second and the doubles
team of Flatau and Solomon took third,
the Ponies had a number of other girls
who won matches and contributed such
as Mariani, who didn’t place, but won
three matches and earned the team five
points. It was a total team effort and in a
way that made it even more special
because it wasn’t one or two girls carrying
the team to the state title and for a
sport that is often very individualistic
the fact that the Ponies won their state
title as a team makes it mean so much
more.
“I think that winning means about the
same to everyone because it took all of
us to win it,” Flatau said. “It was a total
team effort. Everyone contributed and it
was a total team effort so I think that
makes it even better that we won.”
When you play for a program that
wins as much and has as many state
titles as the Havre High tennis program
does the bar and the expectations are
always going to be high. But, up until
now those expectations always seemed
to be a little bit higher for the boy’s program.
Make no mistake, the Havre High
girls were always one of the best teams
in the state, but a different level is
reached when winning a state championship.
After capping off the most successful
four-year run in team history, the
girls tennis team reached the pinnacle of
its sport. They have taken their program
to new heights and they have finally
raised the bar. They reached a goal that
every single high school athlete dreams
of reaching, they won a state championship
and they achieved something that
was 50 years in the making.
“This is something I’ll never forget
for a number of reasons,” Ferguson said.
“Of course I’m proud to bring a state
championship back to our school, and
being a former HHS player, it makes it
that much more special to coach the
girls team to their first-ever state championship.
“But more importantly, I’m just
happy for the kids. They deserve all the
credit and all the happiness that comes
with this experience,” he added. “They
went to Polson and played the best tennis
of their lives collectively. Even the
players that weren’t there, like Haley
McLain and Jocelyn Chagnon were as
much a part of this as everyone else.
These kids earned this state championship
and I am so happy for all 10 of
our girls and even more proud of them
then they’ll ever really know.”
