Clark Fork junior high football goes from winless to undefeated

CLARK FORK — Going undefeated is something most teams fail to ever accomplish.

But the Clark Fork Junior High School football team beat the odds and wrapped up a 7-0 season Monday, Oct. 21 with a 54-14 home victory over Kootenai.

As the final seconds ticked off the clock, the players could hardly hold back their excitement as they realized what they had accomplished.

Head coach Chris Shelton huddled up his team for the final time this season, expressed how proud he was and told them “the 72 Dolphins ain’t got nothing on us.”

The 1972 Miami Dolphins are, of course, the only team in NFL history to win the Super Bowl with a perfect record.

But an undefeated season wasn’t a goal for Clark Fork before the year kicked off. Instead they were focused on improving, something that the Wampus Cats have done every season since Shelton joined the coaching staff in 2017.

Shelton served as an assistant coach in his first season with the team. That year, Clark Fork went winless and after that Shelton decided something needed to be done so he took over the head coaching duties.

“I said ‘we need to change this program around a little bit, I want to see some better stuff coming out of it,’ ” he said.

In his first year in charge, the Wampus Cats went 3-3 and heading into this season Shelton was looking for the team to get even better, but he and the players admitted they didn’t expect a season like this.

Ethan Howard, an eighth grader on the eight man football team, said an undefeated record appeared to be out of reach before the year began but then a handful of new kids joined the team and it began to look possible.

“From the first practice everybody had a whole bunch of energy,” the 13-year-old said. “We were just ready to go.”

And their performance on the field showed that the Wampus Cats were fired up. Clark Fork only allowed its opponents to tally six touchdowns all season while scoring so many touchdowns on offense that they began to lose count.

Cole Sanroman, an eighth grader, quarterback and cornerback on the team, said finishing up his junior high football career with a perfect season is an amazing feeling.

“We gave it our all and battled through the whole season,” the 13-year-old said.

Both Howard and Sanroman said watching the team go from winless to undefeated has been an unreal experience.

Shelton credits his assistant coach Matt Majors and investing time in the kids on the team for the quick turnaround.

“Its really just been building relationships with the kids and instilling confidence,” he said. “The success were seeing this year I think is solely based off the hard work we’ve done since these kids were sixth graders.”

Shelton has also tried to not overwhelm the players by having them memorize a laundry list of plays and instead has them focus on perfecting only a handful.

With only 13 players on the team, a lot of the kids play on both sides of the ball for long periods of time, but Howard, who plays quarterback and defensive end, never gets tired when he’s playing the game he loves.

“I could go all night,” he said.

Shelton only got interested in coaching when his son, Nathan, started playing tackle football in fifth grade.

Shelton said if his son would’ve got involved with tennis or any sport, he would’ve coached him in those sports, but he chose football so Shelton did too.

Once Nathan got into junior high, Shelton joined the Clark Fork coaching staff when Nathan was a seventh grader. When Nathan made the leap to high school this year, Shelton decided to stay with the junior high team because he didn’t want to leave the kids he’d been coaching for the past two years.

Shelton said for him, coaching his players goes beyond the football field and involves teaching the kids lessons they can carry with them for the rest of their lives.

“I want to instill confidence and that we are role models for this town and people look up to us,” he said. “You’re picking them up and making young men out of them instead of just football players.”