COLUMN: Hallowed turf in Hot Springs

There are places in life we wind up in that we will never forget.

For me, one such place is the football field at Hot Springs High School.

The first time I entered the playing area, I had to tiptoe through the deer tulips, aka scat, aka poop.

No problem.

This was a hallowed place in my book. On this often long cut grass the game of six-man football is played. For those of you who have never seen a six-man football game imagine backyard football meets the Canadian Football league.

There are, as the name implies, only six players on the field at once. That is often a good thing and is just as often the only way small town Montanans who want to play high school football can do so. Some schools can’t even come up with six players and sometimes merge with the nearest small town to produce a football team.

The field is 80 yards long instead of the typical 100-yard field in “big boy” football. I laugh when I think of that term because you have to be a stud with the ability to run a lot to survive a six-man game.

A new set of downs, or a first down as it is universally called in all levels of football, requires you travel 15 yard in four plays instead of 10 yard in “regular” football. The four quarters are 10 minutes in length, no doubt in deference to the amount of running a typical six-man player does in a 40-minute game.

Then the rules take a hard right away from other forms of the game. If you have a player who can kick a ball through the uprights for a point after touchdown, that’s good for two points. Merely running or passing two yards for the PAT is worth only one, which is exactly reverse of other forms of football. It's a reward, I suppose, for actually having an accurate kicker in a student body with 40 students.

Most of the small town “stadiums” I have had the pleasure to know are surrounded at least on two sides by mountains and/or towering pine trees. If there are “bleachers” they are usually old style metal or wood.

At one of my favorite places, Hot Springs High, there are concrete slabs in ascending rows for the fans to sit on as you “cowboy up” and plant your carcass on cement.

All of these places have concession stands where a surprising variety of sports food is concocted. All of it is good, as in the old adage of a hot dog always tasting better at a ballgame.

The difference is these hot dogs is usually a couple bucks instead of $10 for a King Dog at the old Seattle Kingdome.

And bucks reminds me of what produces those giant raisin piles otherwise known as deer scat.

I know where they come from, they usually don’t adorn your average football field.

But mountains, trees and deer are just part of the attraction.

The mere fact that you can be sitting at an outdoor ballgame and see a lot of deer is something “city folk” would have a hard time comprehending much less ever seeing in their high population environments.

At one Hot Springs vs somebody game a few years ago, the home town Savage Heat, who often do very well in six man football, as is evident by the 2012 and 2016 State Champions lettering painted below the press box, I had an evil sports writing thought enter this complicated brain of mine.

At halftime, with Hot Springs leading something like 32-0, I was on the sidelines chatting with one of the Savage Heat coaches when we noticed a small herd of six or seven deer were busy munching the tall green grass in the west end zone.

“Coach, what will you give me to lead off my story about this game by saying the deer found the end zone more than the visiting team?”

After a good laugh, we both agreed that might not be a sportsmanlike thing to say or write.

City folk just don’t see that!