The Pioneer football program has been one of the most dominant in Montana for 6-man football in recent years. The Pioneer teams for the last couple years have all made deep playoff runs, resulting in them being known as one of the best teams in the state. Finally, the fall of 2022, the Pioneers came away with their first state football championship in school history. They went undefeated all season, and in the championship they beat the Broadview-Lavina Pirates 67-27. Unfortunately, this past season for the Pioneers wasn't what they were expecting, and I will be going over why.
The Big Sandy Pioneers were expecting to be back-to-back state champions, but with all-state player Wylee Snapp transferring to Fergus High School, the Pioneers were in for an interesting season. In the regular season, the Pioneers started off slowly, compared to what they were used to last year. Instead of blowing teams out, they now found themselves in tough battles, game after game. Even though having many tough battles, the Pioneers came rolling into their last regular season game undefeated and were looking forward to becoming conference champions.
However, the Pioneers did not have an easy path. They first had to go through the also undefeated Chester-Joplin-Inverness Hawks. Both these teams wanted to claim the title as conference champions, but for both teams it was going to be a hard-fought battle. The game started off really well for both teams until things took a turn for the worse for the Pioneers. All-state running back Cooper Taylor went down early in the second quarter with a torn ACL. This wasn't the only injury the Pioneers would have to deal with in this game, sadly. Senior fullback Sam Cox also went down in the second quarter, but his injury was not season-ending. Karter Jurneka also went out with a concussion in the third quarter. After all these injuries, the Pioneers were getting broken down by the Hawks. The Pioneers sadly ended up losing the conference championship, going into playoffs.
In the first round of the playoffs, the Pioneers faced the Mon-Dak Thunder. Although having lost senior running back Cooper Taylor, the Pioneers still believed they could make a deep playoff run. When the game started, they could definitely feel the loss of Cooper. The Thunder were proving to themselves that they could beat the Pioneers, and they did just that by defeating Big Sandy 30-6 and advancing to the next round in the playoffs.
Despite losing the game, the Pioneers still had a great season, but the team wonders how they would have done if they didn't have to deal with players transferring and injuries. Many believe this team could've gone back-to-back, but I guess we will never know.
