It was Sept. 19, the second round of the Kalispell Invitational golf tournament was winding down, and Sam Engellant was in trouble.

Sitting 180 yards off the 17th green at Buffalo Hill Golf Club, the Glacier senior grabbed the club appropriate for a slight headwind, addressed the ball and hit it on the screws. 

“Right when he hit the shot, the wind died,” Wolfpack golf coach Jim Ness said. “The ball carried a little bit and hit the back of the green and bounced out of bounds. 

“I don’t know if you know anything about the 17th green, but it’s pretty diabolical.” 

Now sitting four and chasing leader Dylan Morris of Flathead, Engellant made a drop and grabbed another club. This shot found the green but left him with a long putt. 

Which he ran home. 

“It was about the best bogey I’ve ever seen,” Ness said. 

Engellant is asked about this a couple weeks later. 

“It was tough,” he said of No. 17. “It was almost asking for someone to go out of bounds on it. But you just kind of get in a zone of push-push-push. The entire round I felt like I was chasing strokes, and Dylan kept making birdies. 

“The fourth shot wasn’t great,” he added. “I made a really deep putt. Probably close to a 50-footer.” 

For the record, Engellant did make up a three-stroke deficit after 15 holes at that tournament, but as he headed down his final fairway — No. 1 on this day — he found himself behind again. Morris, playing on Buffalo Hill’s practice hole, finished with a flourish. 

“I had a half a hole left, and my coach said, ‘Dylan just stuffed it on 19, and made birdie,’ “ Engellant remembered. “I fully credit Dylan. He deserved it. He puts in a lot of work.” 

He was also happy for himself. 

“The thing I’m proud of is, if you watched me after i went out of bounds, I don’t think you saw as much emotion as I felt inside,” he said. “Staying contained is the easiest way to stay level and play the way I want to play.” 

Ness, in his first year as Glacier’s golf coach, is amazed by his state championship team in general and Engellant in particular.  

“I followed high school golf from a distance during my 40-year banking career,” he said. “In my short time with Sam, I’m just awestruck. It’s fun to watch. He’s a man beyond his years. His mental state, the physical game, all that stuff. I’m privileged and happy just to hang around the kid.” 

The physical part, we can link partly to Engellant’s height: He stands 6-foot-6. 

“I don’t know if he weighs 160 pounds,” Ness said. “It’s one of those leverage things. He gets so much leverage and club speed, he just overpowers everything.” 

The game stuck with two of the three Engellant boys thanks to their proximity to Buffalo Hill: As in, the seventh fairway is right there. 

Despite his height and lineage — his father Darin is 6-11 and played center for the basketball Montana Grizzlies — golf became his thing. 

“We had him in travel ball and he was on track, of course with my nudge, to be a hooper,” Darin Engellant said. “But then he carved his own path, thanks in part to his older brother Trey. He got really interested in golf. Then they started watching the golfers, and then they started playing. And I just sort of said, ‘Follow your dreams.’ “ 

Sam Engellant did play freshman basketball at Glacier, and golf was only part of the reason he stepped away. He’d also begun to have debilitating headaches. 

“It was a really strange thing,” he remembered. “We really don’t know the cause of it. It was a pretty major anomaly for a lot of doctors.” 

Worse, it took a while to figure out what was wrong. 

“The scariest part was we didn’t have a diagnosis for so long,” his dad said. “The symptoms were headaches, and he really just couldn’t stay upright for a long time.” 

Eventually, a brain scan uncovered a deformity in his cervical column. He was leaking spinal fluid.  

Treatment of that was hit and miss: Engellant counts three times doctors injected him with a “patch,” basically an arrow of blood aimed at sealing up the leak. The third one came in Denver, and when that didn’t work, he went to Denver a second time for surgery. 

The cycle — injection, wait 10 days, then have no improvement — wore on the family. Eventually he healed up, though he'd missed his sophomore year of sports. Then came the slow rehabilitation process. 

“I was gradually moving into half-swings, then full swings, and then training outside of the game,” Sam Engellant said. “But I honestly am extremely lucky. I think most people with this same condition, it takes them four or five years to recover. Sometimes a lot longer. 

“My struggles only lasted a year, until I was able to be back.” 

A year ago, Engellant was walking the fairways at Billings’ Lake Hills Golf Course. It was the State AA tournament, and his two-day total of 2-under 142 tied him for first. He lost medalist honors to Billings Skyview’s Tye Boone in a playoff. 

Two days after the Kalispell Invitational, Ness played in the Northern Pines club championship. Paired up with Engellant, he was awestruck again when the senior won it in a playoff (against Glacier High product Shay Smithwick-Hann). 

“He shot 73-73 and tied Shay,” Ness said. “When Sam got off 18 he thought he was done. Then he went from, ‘I think I won,’ to ‘I haven ‘t won yet,’ and shifted right into focus mode, got his clubs and headed to the first playoff hole.” 

Engellant made his birdie putt, and Smithwick-Hann missed his, but Engellant’s foremost memory is that Ness had a stroke lead after their first nine together. 

“I hadn’t seen my coach play much before then. I was very impressed,” he said. “I didn’t know he was that good.” 

Then he added: “Seventy-three both days. That’s not going to cut it for State.” 

Northern Pines hosts the 2024 State AA meet that begins today. Glacier, with every golfer back from last year’s title team, is certainly a favorite. So is Engellant, though it was teammates Torren Murray and Jonah Wynne that topped the leaderboard at last week’s Western AA Divisional. Murray took medalist honors in a playoff. 

Engellant, though, has been medalist three times this season, including a 15-under finish at the Missoula Invitational (63-66).  

“Golf is a tough sport to set number goals,” he said. “You can be doing all the right things and it’s still not clicking. I set more goals about how I operate mentally. Maintaining composure and still enjoying it are my main goals.” 

He notes the power in the field, and the pressure Missoula Sentinel has applied, including last week. 

“We went 11-under the second day, and we hadn’t been playing so well, Sentinel would have scared us,” he said. “Because they went 7-under. 

“People don’t talk about it much, but golf in Montana is really getting stronger. I’m really impressed with the current generation of golfers.” 

More and more go on to play in college, but Engellant has no plans to. He’s visited Alabama, but it’s the academics and campus that drew him, not the Crimson Tide golf team. 

“He’s really good at golf, and passionate about golf,” his dad said. “But on the other hand he has really good scholarship opportunities because of his academics. Golf is fleeting.”  

Which is why Sam Engellant counts himself fortunate after his illness. 

“I definitely found my faith in a lot of ways through that,” he said. “it’s hard to go through something that monumental and not change. I see my blessings so much more.” 

His last two days of high school golf remain. 

“I’ve already had such an amazing season that things can only go up from here,” he said. “I’m always so proud of what I’ve done, State is just a bonus.”