As the spring sports season begins to hit the heart of its schedule, for many athletes in the region, the season is just beginning.

It’s baseball season for the area’s American Legion teams, with the season kicking off last weekend for the Kalispell Lakers and this weekend for many other teams around the region.

As they roll out the bats on the diamonds, the state’s lacrosse teams are also finding a start to their season. At the same time, Montana’s seven high school rugby teams converged on Kalispell last weekend and high school rodeo is already a month and a half into its season.

As tastes and interests diversify in northwest Montana, the local sports scene is beginning to expand, with unsanctioned options growing every year for the area’s high school athletes.

The phenomenon isn’t unique to Montana.

Montana offers 11 high school sports through the state sanctioning body, the Montana High School Association.

Seven of the sports are mainstays found in every state in the union.

Football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, wrestling, cross country and track and field are played in some form by nearly every school in the state, whether it has 1,100 students or 11. Participation varies by class and region in tennis, softball, golf and swimming.

While not a wealth of opportunities, of the 10 states with the lowest population density in the U.S., Montana is only slightly below average in the amount of sports it offers high school students.

The Rocky Mountain states, other than Colorado, generally only sanction 12 or 13 sports. All three states that don’t have sanctioned high school baseball are in the region, Wyoming and South Dakota joining Montana.

Because of the wide open spaces that make the state famous, sanctioning more sports doesn’t often make sense. In the Eastern portions of the state, dwindling populations and high school enrollment is causing many schools to co-op with long-time rivals or shutter programs entirely.

While a statewide addition doesn’t make sense for many areas, the demand for more variety is still there.

Much of that demand is met by long-standing sports, chiefly the state’s American Legion baseball teams. Skiing and gymnastics, once offered through the high schools, have continued to be popular, with our area producing not only multiple state champions, but an Olympian, in the past few years.

Martial arts have also been a popular option for the area’s kids, with Kalispell’s Taylor Reed winning a national championship last year out of Big Sky Martial Arts, and the proliferation of mixed martial arts growing at places like Straight Blast Gym in Kalispell and Whitefish.

While those sports thrive, it’s the newer additions to the area that are beginning to turn heads.

Ice hockey, still relatively new to the area, is beginning to find athletes that aren’t quite basketball players or wrestlers. This winter, the area sent a handful of students to elite state teams, two of which won a regional championship.

The newer spring options of rugby and lacrosse have also begun to find an audience. Kalispell’s rugby team is among the favorites to win the state championship this year, pulling athletes from Flathead and Glacier. The lacrosse teams in the Flathead and Polson each showed well in front of large crowds at the state tournament last season in Whitefish.

The growth of options is the beginning of many sure to come, with more people moving into the state and more sports being broadcast from around the world, showing the diverse options to have fun in competition.

Most importantly, it’s a boon for the area’s young athletes, who will have more ways to stay engaged in sports, even if that sport isn’t offered through a high school.

Variety, they say, is the spice of life. It’s good to see some spice added to our area’s sports scene.