Steve Kracher was a sophomore in high school when his family moved from Anaconda to Columbia Falls, and in three seasons as a Wildcat drew a bit of attention for his football skills.

In late 1971 or early ‘72, his senior year, Montana State was not on his radar. Montana was coming off two Camellia Bowl appearances under Jack Swarthout. The Griz were big on the block.

Then Kracher (pronounced “Crocker”) was called down to the Columbia Falls principal’s offense. There was Sonny Holland, the second-year coach of the MSU Bobcats.

“The principal left, and Coach Holland sat behind his desk,” Kracher remembered. “And we started talking.”

Kracher might have expected a fire and brimstone recruiting pitch, because that’s what he was used to.

“They were all loud, ‘You’re going to do this, we’re going to do that.’ All those projections, I’d guess you call it,” he said. “He just sat behind that desk and in his soft voice, outlined what he envisioned.”

Holland wanted Montana kids. Hard-nosed and physical, that did the right things and were competitive.

“He didn’t promise me anything. He just said, ‘We think you could fit in with what we’re trying to do down in Bozeman,’” Kracher said. “I remember going home for lunch that day and telling my mother, ‘I’m going to go to MSU.’ And she said, ‘What? Well, great.’”

So strong was the pitch that Kracher signed his letter of intent before actually visiting the MSU campus — that happened at a track meet that spring. He did recall that after Holland visited, a young assistant named Dennis Erickson showed up and took his family to dinner.

For dessert, Erickson casually mentioned the Cats were going to play a game in Hawaii.

“I’d hardly been out of Montana,” Kracher said. “That never did turn out. We ended up playing Hawaii after I graduated.”

He eventually got his masters degree from MSU, during which time he became close friends with the late Craig Finberg, a fellow Wildcat turned basketball star for the Cats. He counts himself lucky to have spent 41 years coaching at either the high school or collegiate level; at age 68 he’s an assistant for Cary Finberg and the Wildkat girls basketball team.

In Kracher’s first season at MSU the Cats went 8-3 playing at Van Winkle Stadium, next to Bozeman High. Sales Stadium, now called Bobcat Stadium, opened in 1973.

“Kind of an immediate turnaround,” Kracher said. “I often think about what it must have been for Boise State and Idaho and their fancy stadiums — and here they’re playing us at a high school stadium.”

And getting beat. By 1974 he was the backup tailback to Wayne Edwards; in 1975 he started and was spelled by Donny Ueland in an

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offense that ran the ball upwards of 50 times a game.

The fullback on that 1975 team was Delmar Jones, who became the star tailback on Holland’s 1976 Division II national championship team.

Holland, as most of Montana knows, passed away Saturday. The Greatest Bobcat of All Time was 84. He was soft-spoken, but his competitiveness came through in every speech. Especially when the Griz came up.

“He said, ‘There’s 365 days a year, and only one day you get to play them,’” he recalled. “They were always at the back of our mind, all year.”

It should be noted that Kracher went 4-0 playing against the Griz. And did eventually get to Hawaii, spending a year there coaching and teaching. Then, as always, Holland was in the back of his mind.

“Every time I saw him I’d tell him how much he impacted my life, and that I used a lot of his coaching philosophy as my own,” he said. “That’s really what a man’s legacy should be: How much he’s impacted the lives of the people he touched. He’s certainly done that for a lot of us. That’s why we played so hard for him.”

Fritz Neighbor can be reached at 758-4463 or fneighbor@dailyinterlake.com.