While the Grizzlies and Bobcats announced their football early signing classes Wednesday, one might look back at a spring chicken who committed to the Griz in 2016.

Matt Rensvold is still with us, as they say — he was a junior tight end this past fall. When he took the field during Montana’s 53-16 win over Portland State, at least one person saw the name on the jersey and wondered: As in, Matt Rensvold?

“A lot of people did,” said the 255-pounder out of Polson. “A lot of people didn’t know I was still on the team. But they found out.”

Rensvold saw action in nine games and caught three passes for 24 yards for the 8-5 Griz.

“I kind of wanted to prove something to myself, more than anything,” he said. “That I could be resilient.”

He had no reason to believe otherwise during his high school years, when he stood out — he is 6-foot-4 — in football and basketball for the Polson Pirates. A trip to Montana’s 7-on-7 football camp resulted in a partial scholarship offer, and he was joined at UM by Polson teammate Tanner Wilson.

Then his career took a series of left turns.

“I never had a major injury in high school,” he noted. “I kind of stayed pretty healthy. Then I got to college and I started going through some big injuries.”

He tore his left anterior cruciate ligament for the first time his first fall on campus, in 2017. He redshirted, had a promising 2018 campaign (eight catches, two for touchdowns), then had the same ACL give way in UM’s third game of 2019, at Oregon.

That was a contact injury; when he got back on the field during the 2020 Covid year, he tore the same ACL yet again in practice.

“I barely got touched,” remembered. He underwent two more operations to get things squared away.

When he returned to the SprinTurf on Sept. 24, it marked his first game action in 158 weeks. The pandemic had something to do with that certainly, but that’s a long time with a lot of physical therapy. But he had his return mapped out.

“I enjoyed being out there with those guys again,” Rensvold said. “It had been hard watching them all go to battle all those Saturdays. Win or lose, it was fun to be out there.

“But it was also fun to watch those guys grow through the years. It’s easy to see everyone getting better, watching from the side.”

Fellow tight end Cole Grossman, he said, “Is a different breed,” but adds that Joe Weida, Micah Ashton, Peyton Brammer, Erik Barker, Joey Elwell and Jake Olson are no slouches. “I’ve seen every one of them get better and better.”

Likewise, he’s been around long enough to see Shrine Game teammates like Nate Dick, Trevor Hoerner and Mike McGuinness — plus his best friend, Wilson — leave the Griz program early.

“It’s not for everyone,” Rensvold allowed. “The first fall camp, you figure that out.”

He’s used what is now a full scholarship to earn a wildlife biology degree, then take business prerequisites ahead of chasing down his MBA starting in 2023. When you take that into account, it matters less that Rensvold has more ACL surgeries (4) than TDs (3) at Montana.

Not that it mattered at all to him.

“Obviously, it came across my mind a little bit,” he said of retiring. “But it was never in the forefront. It wasn’t the first thing on my mind. I wanted to prove to myself I could play football again.”

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