The first time I walked into Legends Stadium, I took a picture.

I had seen plenty of football fields before, worked in more than a few press boxes and admired my fair share of bleachers, but the endless Montana sky, reaching infinitely on the horizon and framed at the bottom by snow-capped mountain peaks, was unlike anything I had ever seen.

I’m not ashamed to say that it gave me goose bumps.

Last weekend wrapped up my first prep season in the Flathead Valley and my first year outside of a major city. Along the way I’ve had the chance to write about lots of wins, just as many losses and some truly remarkable, fascinating people.

More than anything, though, this year has been one learning experience after another, which is something pretty cool for a not-so-young pup that hasn’t been inside a classroom in well over a decade.

There was the time I covered a rodeo my first weekend on the job. A rodeo! The closest I had come before was when the baseball team I was working for in Gary, Indiana hired the Ghost Riders — a traveling pack of monkeys that wears adorable little cowboy outfits while riding dogs — to perform between games of a doubleheader. I am forever grateful to Judy Kesler and all of the cowboys I interviewed for stifling their laughter at all of my questions, which I’m certain were some version of ‘so, uh, how about that cow you just fell off of?’

Or the time I ventured west to work on a profile of a superstar athlete in a tiny little town. The town was so tiny, in fact, that I got lost on the way to meet him, instead pulling off onto a dead-end dirt road with a deer in the middle of it, incredulous that I had wandered into its personal space. I eventually found my subject, Troy’s multi-sport star Sean Opland, and I laughed when he joked that he had to drive into town to get cell phone reception. Only he wasn’t joking.

And there was that day I pretended to be a real actual news reporter, too, covering the bizarre court hearing involving Flathead wrestler Payton Hume, who had been disqualified from the state tournament and was suing, among others, his own school. There’s no better way to make a sports guy feel out of place than by making him wear nice pants and sit indoors for hours while smart people talk in circles.

Those days were a blast, but no story from this past year could hold a candle to the Brock-opalypse. Or Os-mania. Or whatever you want to call the in-town buzz surrounding the tall, mysterious Flathead grad who unseated — for a time — arguably the greatest quarterback of his generation. Brock Osweiler’s ascension to the Denver Broncos’ starting QB job was front-page news on our sports section for weeks at a time. We wrote about everything surrounding the story, reflecting on the time Osweiler skipped his homecoming dance to check on an ailing teammate while simultaneously breaking down which bar was opening earliest to accommodate the expected crowds for his first start.

Then Osweiler won a few games, then he got benched (triggering a national debate on who should start, the kid from Kalispell or some guy named Peyton Manning), then the Broncos won the Super Bowl, then he left town for the Houston Texans. Oh yeah, and while all of this was happening, another ex-Flathead quarterback, Mike Reilly, led his Edmonton Eskimos to the Grey Cup title and was named the game’s most valuable player.

Flathead football was my first beat and I guess I picked a decent time to show up in town. When the alums weren’t stealing headlines, Kyle Samson’s plucky Braves made their way to the state playoffs for the first time since 2011.

I have written in this space before about the place sports can hold in the broader world and to each of us personally. And while it’s a blast for me to cover sports because they are never actually life and death — unlike some beats at a newspaper — there are few subjects that can match the emotion, and there were plenty of highs and lows in town in my first year.

I distinctly remember now-former Flathead girls basketball coach Lisa Hendrickson’s candid admission before the season that she didn’t completely appreciate the scope of the rebuilding project in front of her when she took the job three years ago. Those words kept ringing in my head four months later when we talked after she resigned her position. Hendrickson was emotionally wasted, worn raw in a way that’s only possible if you’ve been coming up short in something you care so passionately about.

The end, of course, is always emotional. I didn’t enjoy a moment of tracking teary-eyed Bravettes volleyball coach Courtney Baker down a hallway at Brick Breeden Fieldhouse to interview her after her team was eliminated from the state tournament. Nor is there joy in watching countless high school athletes after their seasons and, in some cases, careers end, whether that’s in the state championship game or sometime much earlier.

The tears in the eyes last week of Glacier softball coach Andy Fors, however, told a different story. Fors had just finished addressing his team after they tiptoed around the abyss and completed a last at bat rally to stay alive at the state tournament last Friday night. That win over Billings West, keyed by Meg Hornby, a player called “little sister” by her teammates, was one of the games of the year in the Flathead Valley. Fors is as stoic as they come on the field, but his face in the outfield after meeting his players told the story of the emotional roller coaster he’d been riding during the comeback.

It was fitting, too, that the Wolfpack’s win that day was the last game I covered this season, and that it was played up at Kidsports. The fields there are one of the best spots in town to gaze out on a big, bright Montana sky, soaking up the mountains in every direction.

Now, is there anything to do around here in the summer?

Andy Viano is a sports reporter, columnist and nostalgic old man. He can be reached at 758-4446 or [email protected].