It’s back: Bullpups football will return this fall

SANDPOINT — The Sandpoint Middle School has been without a football program for over 10 years. But not anymore.

This fall, the Bullpups will field a seventh and eighth grade football team.

The effort to revitalize the program started in 2018 when funds to bring back an SMS football team were included in the extracurricular activities portion of the Lake Pend Oreille School District supplemental levy, according to Kari Granier, the Sandpoint Middle School athletic director.

It’s been a couple years in the making but Granier is looking forward to bringing back SMS football.

“We kind of just sat on it for a year to build capacity and make sure that when we do launch it, we do it correctly,” she said.

Troy Holt will be the head coach and he learned that the school would be restarting the program this year in February. He said SHS head football coach Ryan Knowles reached out and told him that they wanted to push to use the funds to start the program in 2020.

Granier said she has loved working with Knowles throughout this process because he has such a passion for helping kids and building enthusiasm to be a Bulldog. Granier hopes to build a football program that mirrors what Knowles has done in just two years at the high school.

Holt said LPOSD Superintendent Tom Albertson has been really involved in the process as well and backed the movement from the start.

“He’s the one that pulled all the strings to get it going,” Holt said.

Granier is wrapping up her second year as the AD. She said the school has seen an uptick in kids participating in extracurricular activities recently and feels restoring the football program will allow them to engage more with the students and enrich their experience at SMS.

“Our main reason for doing this is really just to promote and build school culture,” she said. “We just really believe that getting as many kids as we can involved in activities and things outside of school hours just really helps inside the school walls too.”

Holt teaches advanced fitness at the middle school and has been coaching football for 23 years. He said having a football team will boost school pride and teach kids valuable lessons including how to fight through adversity and never give up.

“Football is one of those big pillars when it comes to teaching young men about life itself,” Holt said.

The response to restarting the program has been great so far, Holt said. Twenty-two eighth graders and 27 incoming seventh graders are already signed up to play football.

“As soon as we advertised this last week I got an influx of a ton of people contacting me and signing up for football,” he said.

During the hiatus without a middle school football team, several youth football programs were started including the Sandpoint Affordable Football League. Holt said he isn’t worried about the leagues not affiliated with SMS because he believes having them is beneficial to everyone.

“Club programs will always be out there but I think as a school we can be a very positive influence to kids from the school setting,” he said. “We’re going to have competition of course, but that’s the whole drive for this is competition is good because everybody has to bring a better product to the table.”

Holt said Granier has locked down seven games for this season including matchups with Priest River and Bonners Ferry and they are working on getting two more.

Holt has been putting in extra hours over the past few months to order equipment for the kids and be prepared for the coming season, but he said it’s all worth it.

Summer ball for the team starts on Monday, June 15, and the first fall practice is set for August 27.

SMS students will be returning school supplies and cleaning out their lockers next week and Holt will have a booth setup near the front office Monday through Friday for kids interested in signing up for football. For more information visit the Sandpoint Middle School Facebook page or email coach Holt at troy.holt@lposd.org.