Filius retires as wrestling coach

After more than two decades as head coach of the Havre High School wrestling team, Scott Filius, who has directed the Blue Ponies to a Class A record 12 state championships, is walking away.

The long-time head coach, who helped the Blue Ponies finish second in Class A at last weekend's All-Class State Tournament, announced his decision to retire Tuesday after 23 seasons on the job.

"I think that we have got people that are young and ready to take over," Filius said. "Hell, I thought I would get fired by now and since that didn't happen, I might as well step away."

While Filius always had a sense of humor, what he meant to Havre High athletics and the wrestling program is no laughing matter. Since taking over in the 1995-96 season, the former NAIA National Champion wrestler at Montana State University-Northern has led the Ponies to 12 state championships, including a run of five in a row from 2013-17 and four in a row from 2004-2007. Havre also finished in the top three at state 19 times.

"He has had an incredible career," HHS activities director Dennis Murphy said. "He has built an outstanding program and he has done an incredible job. There comes a time when you are a coach that you know when it's time to step down, and I think he feels that way right now. The thing that is neat about him is that the cupboard is not bare. A lot of times when coaches leave, it's because the cupboard is bare, but that's not the case here. He has made a great foundation, our program is good, we have a lot of good kids coming back, and that's a credit to him."

Under the guidance of Filius, the Ponies won state championships at an unprecedented pace. Few teams, in few sports, throughout the history of the Montana High School Association, have won as much, or as often, as Filius and Havre wrestling has. His first state championship as a coach came back in 1997 and his final one came in 2017, the same year his son Parker Filius and Jase Stokes became the first four-time state champions in the history of Pony wrestling.

"I really only coached Parker for one year," Filius quipped of the four years he spent coaching his son, who now wrestles for Purdue University. "After the first year, he stopped listening to me. He started telling me what he was supposed to be doing. But no, it was a lot of fun."

Over the years, Filius had a lot of fun and, indeed, that was part of his mantra. That, along with hard work, were two things that he stressed above all others. His Pony teams knew how to work hard, in fact, they were known for it. But they had fun, too, and he said he will miss that, along with his fellow coaches, as much as anything else.

"I coached with people that I very much cared for," Filius said. "I put in 14 years with (Chad) Edgar and everybody I coached with and there is a pile of them, all the way back to Ralph Jimison and Chad Armstrong. What I did, the people I did it with, made it worthwhile for me. I had great relationships with a lot of parents and that made it fun for me."

As far as why Filius decided to retire from coaching, the answer was simple: It was all about family.

"More than anything it was my family," Filius said. "I have a four-year window with Parker in school and a four-year window with Sadie (Filius) coming to high school and to do it right, takes a full-time commitment. It takes a year-round commitment. I didn't want to short change the kids that I was coaching, I didn't want to short-change the parents, and it seemed right."

Now that his career has come to an end, the final numbers are staggering. Filius is third all-time in the state of Montana with 12 state wrestling titles as a head coach. Jim Street of Butte High has 15 has more. Filius is also tied with Street for second when it comes to top-three finishes at state with a total of of 19, including five runner-ups and two third-place finishes. Only Guy Melby of Sidney has more.

It terms of individual champions, Filius has coached 58 in his illustrious career, which trails only Jug Beck, the legendary head coach of Missoula Sentinel, and Melby. Filius also joins a rare group of wrestling coaches to win five or more consecutive state titles. Street, Beck and David Edington of Ronan are the others.

Filius, who was inducted into the Montana Coaches Hall of Fame last summer, has also won countless Coach of the Year honors, both at the state, regional and national level. A native of Billings, and a graduate of Billings Senior, Filius has also been a longtime history teacher at Havre High, including being awarded Teacher of the Year at various points in his career. He and his wife, Kari, have also seen their children, Peyton, Parker and Sadie, blossom in their time in Havre. As mentioned earlier, Parker is a red-shirt freshman at Purdue and was an outstanding student, now studying engineering. Peyton, the oldest, is playing her last season of basketball for the MSU-Northern Skylights and is set to earn a teaching degree after a brilliant academic career, while Sadie will be moving from Havre Middle School to HHS next fall.

And all the while being a great teacher, husband and father, Filius has managed to become one of the most decorated, respected and dedicated high school wrestling coaches the state of Montana has ever seen.

"He has an incredible passion for the sport of wrestling and he was able to take that passion and relay it to his kids," Murphy said. "And his kids worked extremely hard and they found success because of it. It's always tough when a good coach is stepping away because you always feel that they still have years left, but he has dedicated almost 25 years to wrestling as a coach.

"I knew I was doing what I loved," Filius said. "So it was never a question of how long I was going to stay in it. I knew I had kids that worked hard and so I guess all that went together. I never had a goal of mine, except to win all the time."