Cross Country
The state cross country meet took place on October 25 at the University of Montana Golf course. This event is the culmination of months of hard work and training, and also signals the end of the 2025 cross country season.
The Hellgate Knights went into the meet with jumbled expectations; after a tumultuous year of coaching changes, injuries, and training shifts, there were really no clear indicators for how the Knights would perform.
In years past, the Hellgate runners have been featured prominently on the podium at state, and coming home with a trophy has been the norm for countless generations of Hellgate runners. This season, it was all different.
The city meet, which takes place two weeks before the state championship, serves as a gauge for how the team will compete at the next meet. This meet takes place at Linda Vista golf course, and features both JV and varsity runners from all three Missoula high schools. The Hellgate girls had won the city trophy every year since 2007, showcasing a talented and state-ready team in this competition.
But this year, Big Sky highschool fielded its best team in recent history, and the trophy was taken from the Knights ending their almost 20 year legacy of city champion. Despite this loss, the Hellgate girls ran their best race of the season at city.
While this was overshadowed by the Eagles’ winning performance, the Knights were not to be underestimated. If anything, this loss stoked the team’s competitive spirit going into the state meet. Hellgate girls placed 6th, beating Big Sky for the first time all season. This was a win for the girls team, though many were disappointed to not come away with a trophy, as has been the norm in years past.
“I was heavily ashamed [of getting 6th place],” said Gia Petrini, a varsity senior on the team. “In the past three years, we’ve podiumed every time,”
On the men’s side, the team was as strong, if not stronger, than previous seasons. With multiple impressive showings at meets throughout the season, the Hellgate boys were confident and bloodthirsty going into city and state. The boys won the city championship, beating out both Sentinel and Big Sky by a sound margin, and then turned to their more pressing competition; that with Bozeman at the State meet.
Throughout the season, Bozeman dominated the course, and the Hellgate boys had sights on finally beating them out of the top spot. The state meet rolled around, and after a valiant effort, the boys placed third for Montana AA schools.
“I’m very proud of [the boys]. And a little bit jealous,” Petrini said.
Now, with one trophy in the case, the team begins a hard winter of training for indoor track season.
Football
Two years ago, the Knights ended their season without a single win. The year after that, last year, Hellgate beat Flathead for their only win in their last game of the season. After these two difficult seasons, the Hellgate football team was hungrier than ever to turn their record around. Progress was the goal of the Knights, and a 3-6 finish for the Knights is certainly evidence of a positive trajectory.
The team’s schedule was also uncharacteristically challenging this year. The team went up against giants like Billings West and Glacier, the homecoming game this year, as well as strong teams from both of the Knight’s crosstown rivalries.
“It’s probably the best season we’ve had in 31 years,” said senior Seamus Cambelll, the center for the football team. The cause for this celebration is the historic journey to make the playoffs this year, an accomplishment that has not been achieved for the Knights since 1994. The team eventually lost to the Bozeman Hawks in the first round, but this loss should not undermine the progress that the Hellgate football team has made.
It is easy to turn negative when a playoff season is cut short. However, the reason that the playoffs are special is because they are the culmination of all of the hard work that a team has put in during the regular season. The Knights certainly earned their success, with some working their entire high school career towards the same goal.
A Hellgate Football season is always a tale of perseverance. Week in and week out, the top priority of every member of the team is steady improvement, casting forward into a schedule ripe with opportunities to prove to their competitors that they are not a team to be overlooked.
“I think we overperformed expectations,” Campbell said. “I have no regrets about the season.”
Soccer
Hellgate soccer has long been regarded as one of the schools most consistent sports teams, and the 2025 season was no different. Both the boys and girls teams capped off another exemplary season in the state tournament with the girls finishing in the quarter finals and the boys making it to the championship and finishing second in the state.
“I definitely think at the beginning of the season there was a lot of question in the air, what the team was going to look like and how it was all going to go down,” said senior captain Slade Jones, one of the boys teams center-backs. Boys soccer graduated 17 seniors last year, and in a season following so much turnover, the team was unsure of how far it could go.
“As soon as we got done with tryouts and into the season, we found our identity as a team and it was great from there on,” Jones said.
One of the biggest challenges facing the boys team this year was the question of the keeper position. With the graduation of the legendary Hank ‘Shutout’ Shattuck last year, sophomore keeper Henry Leow had big shoes to fill.
“I hadn’t played with Henry before, but getting to work with him in practice and scrimmage definitely built a connection between us and Michael [Allmacher, senior] as centerbacks and then the rest of the back line,” Jones said. “As the season went on, we got more and more comfortable and trusted each other more.”
Leow was able to shine in the role of keeper for the knights all year. Knights fans can breathe a sigh of relief with the guarantee of an extremely talented player in goal for the next two seasons.
The boys team finished the season with a record of 16-2, facing Gallatin in Bozeman at the state championship and tragically losing 2-3. The team had not made it this far in the tournament since the 2022 season and had lost in the semifinals the previous two years, so Jones said he was extremely happy with this result.
“We made it to the semifinals last year, and that was a team full of a very strong squad and we ended up making it farther than them this year,” he said. “Being the leader of the team and being able to get to a place where I couldn’t get before with a different team was a big accomplishment.”
Jones said he feels confident about the future of the team next year. He said the loss of a “few key seniors” will hurt, but that there is a number of hardworking players who will step up and take on bigger roles.
“I think they’re going to do amazing,” he said.
On the girls side, it was a similar story of past-senior turnover. The team graduated ten seniors from last year’s lineup, leading to a number of new faces making up this year’s varsity squad, which senior captain and midfielder/forward AK Puryear said brought up a lot of questions in the offseason.
“I think that kind of fueled us at the beginning of the season,” she said. However, she said once many of the new underclassmen settled into their roles as varsity players, the energy wore off which negatively affected their performance.
“Our defense was very good, but it didn’t transfer into goals because our offense couldn’t finish,” Puryear said.
The girls team struggled with major injuries throughout the season, which Puryear said perhaps contributed to their inability to score. Starting seniors Elly Reed and Brynlee Sebastian were dealing with injuries for large amounts of the year, which kept them from playing and set the knights back at both ends of the field.
“We had to adapt, especially with [Reed] out, because she was one of our good forwards,” Puryear said. “I feel like that was one of the reasons we couldn’t score because we relied on her so much in past seasons.”
Puryear said that Sebastian’s absence in the backfield hurt the team as well.
Hellgate girls soccer finished the season 7-5-2, making the playoff tournament before losing 0-2 to Flathead in the quarterfinals. Puryear said that the season went well overall.
“We would have liked to win more games and produce more goals, but in future years since it’s a young team they’ll be really good,” she said. “I think they could be top of the conference and make a run at the playoffs next year.”
Overall, both sides of Hellgate soccer put up wonderful performances all season long. Fans showed up to cheer on the knights en masse, at both home and away games, which serves as a testament to both the players and community that Hellgate high school forms around its sports teams. It has been a highlight of the Fall season watching soccer, and Hellgate will be sad to see it gone for the year.
Volleyball
The 2025 high school volleyball season is wrapping up, and the best teams had an opportunity at the Montana AA State Championship. All of the state games were held in Bozeman, Montana at Montana State University (MSU) college where the school has the capacity to host all four classes.
The Hellgate Lady Knights volleyball team finished as conference champions. They were the number one team in the west for the fall season. The team competed against eight teams and because of their number one finish, earned an automatic chance at state along with the number two seed, Sentinel High School.
With the new head coach Patrick Hiller coming out of retirement and stepping in to coach the knights varsity team, each girl has adapted to new coaching methods and drills that helped the knights at state. Hiller previously coached volleyball at Sentinel High School, then CMR High School in Great Falls, Montana.
“He loves to tell us that he’s been coaching for thirty two years,” said varsity senior Savannah Shepherd. “I think he, and the other coaching staff have done a great job of getting everyone in shape.”
The last time the Lady Knights won the AA State Championship was in 1993 and with that knowledge the team has been pushed harder than ever this season.
Due to the Lady Knights’ finish, they played the number four seed in the east Billings Senior High School on November 12th and lost. Their next game on November 13th was against Helena High School where the Lady Knights swept the team.
Hours after the win against Helena, the team played CMR High School from Great Falls where they started off strong, but ended up falling apart after the third set and losing.
“I think the season went really well overall,” Shepherd said. “I’m proud of the way our team played and I’m not ready for it to be over, but it is.”
Even though the Lady Knights didn’t place in state, this is the first time in numerous years that the team has been conference champions. All of the team is excited for future memories for years to come, and have high hopes that next year they can bring home some hardware for Hellgate.
