Playoff time!
The Mullan/St. Regis Tigers won the North Star League for the second consecutive year and will be hosting Horseshoe Bend in a 1A D2 State Playoff game this Saturday in Mullan.
Courtesy photo
MULLAN — They didn’t need any sort of fancy tiebreaker, they didn’t need heroics, they just needed to stay the course.
And that’s exactly what the Mullan/St. Regis Tigers did.
The Co-Op Tigers won their second consecutive North Star League championship with their 58-14 win over Clark Fork on Friday afternoon at John Drager Field.
This year there was little drama when it came to Mullan football, the 7-1 Tigers posted an average margin of victory that was just over 35 points per win (not counting a forfeit).
Last season it took a Kansas Tiebreaker with Lakeside to propel Mullan into the playoffs, this season there was little resistance when it came to the Tigers and their ability to impose their will upon their opponents.
“The work begins now for us,” said Mullan Head Coach Stetson Spooner. “We won the league, that was a goal of ours, but the real goal still remains and that’s to make a run at the title.”
Spooner and his crew aren’t unfamiliar with their competition throughout the state, and are fully prepared to go into battle with the Kendricks, Carey’s and Dietrich’s of the state.
“We know that they are freakishly good,” Spooner said. “But we believe that we’re right there with them and we can play with any of them.”
Their first test will come in the form of Horseshoe Bend.
The second place team from the Long Pine Conference, the Mustangs needed a fourth quarter drive to knock off Castleford and set up the meeting with the Tigers.
“We’ve seen them, they have a pretty nasty passing attack,” Spooner said.
Mullan has a pretty nasty team too though.
The combination of familial tandem playmakers Riley and Luke Trogden and Adam and Caleb Ball have been the steady hands for the Tigers, while several other players have stepped up to fill the spaces where there was anything lacking.
Mullan hosted a playoff game last year, a humbling 82-34 loss to Kendrick that they have not forgotten about, and will look to rectify with a few wins in this year’s playoff.
Mullan will host Horseshoe Bend on Saturday at 1 p.m. at John Drager Field.