It was quite a week last week, and that was before I found myself witness to a birthday party/dart tournament that chased me from my favorite table in Missoula – well before that party ended in fisticuffs.

I was in Missoula to cover State AA golf and ended up seeing a) a little soccer and b) a lot of football – about a game and a half packed into 48 minutes.

By the end of that football game 102 points had been scored, including 54 by the Glacier Wolfpack, and Jake Rendina had done his best to outshine a somewhat overlooked Missoula Hellgate receiver named Leo Gilardi.

Rendina’s first of what became seven touchdowns was answered by Dante Mauiri’s 1-yard run – a TD set up when Mauiri fired a pass that may have been to Gilardi and may have been to another receiver. I honestly couldn’t tell, but Gilardi grabbed it and turned it into a 49-yard gain.

Either way, the tone was set.

Adding up my play-my-play later that Thursday night I feared I’d given at least one catch that belonged to Ian Finch, who wears 11, to Gilardi, who wears 1. I had the latter for 341 yards – but Hellgate came up with 348. That’s well above the single-game record of 307 that’s in the Montana High School Association’s record book – a book that needs revisions, certainly, but a huge game.

The top three receiving games before last Friday: Whitehall’s Andrew Simon, 307 in 2015; Billings Central’s Doug Reid, 290 in 1995 (I covered that game); Columbia Falls’ Ty Morgan, 287 in 2014 (I talk to Morgan just about every Friday).

Now to Rendina. In Glacier’s fairly short history there had been four games where a player had five rushing TDs, and Drew Turner had two of those. Thomas Trefney and Aaron Mitchell had the others. Turner added a 2-point PAT run in one of his; he and Trefney each had 32 points in a game, and Turner’s 267-yard outing against Missoula Big Sky in 2017 was another single-game record.

Was. Rendina’s total according to Glacier: 291 yards on 35 carries (I had him for 275 yards, unofficially). The seven TDs and 42 points are two more school records.

Trefney’s single-season record of 32 touchdowns might be safe, if only because 4-0 Glacier has just three games left in a truncated regular season. The playoffs loom – so does COVID-19, I hate to say – but Rendina is sitting at 782 rushing yards and 18 touchdowns. It is frightening what the junior might roll up in a full season.

As it is, he has two of Glacier’s 12 200-yard rushing games.

So let’s stay positive, like the resilient golfers that ran up against tricky greens at Larchmont and Missoula Country Club. Thursday afternoon, as I stood by Glacier coach Doug Manaker, one of his girls came up and in a matter of fact voice, said: “I cried on four holes today.”

It struck me funny, and she laughed too. At the time the Glacier boys were just a misplaced drive behind Missoula Sentinel – 308 strokes to the Spartans’ 305. That the Pack fell off the pace Friday was no crime, nor was it for anyone to finish behind Sentinel freshman Kade McDonough. He’s a worthy state medalist, or as one coach said of the 14-year-old: “Kid’s just a stick.”

Glacier’s boys took home third-place hardware. I came back to Kalispell with some sun and – perhaps hidden behind my mask – a smile. I suspect I may never enter a dart tournament. I may swear off birthdays as well.

Fritz Neighbor can be reached at 758-4463 or at [email protected].