The Whitefish Bulldogs and Eureka Lions proved themselves to be road warriors with impressive wins last week in the Montana high school football playoffs.

Their reward: More road games, though Whitefish is thankful for a shorter trip this week: The Bulldogs play at Frenchtown in the Class A semifinals at 7 p.m. Friday. 

Eureka, which traveled farther than Whitefish last week — the Lions won at Red Lodge 28-13 Saturday, the day after Whitefish prevailed 27-20 in Laurel — will be in Manhattan for a Class B semifinal Saturday at 1 p.m. 

Whitefish at Frenchtown 

The 8-2 Bulldogs seem to be playing their best football and probably need to against an 8-1 Frenchtown team that, like Laurel last week, boasts an excellent running back in Cole Johnson. 

Johnson, a 160-pound senior, has 1,182 yards and 13 touchdowns on the ground.  

“He’s fun to watch,” fourth-year Whitefish coach Brett Bollweg said. “He runs the ball hard and has a lot of speed and power to go with it. They want to get downhill, they want to get lateral. They’ll tighten things up and spread things out as well.” 

The Broncs, under second-year coach Seth Mason, are kind of all over. 

“They just kind of do some unique things offensively,” Bollweg said. “Some of the things that they do have some shades of some Bigfork stuff.” 

Bollweg is impressed with Frenchtown’s Dawson Rodoni, a junior quarterback with 13 TD passes. He’s not the running threat that, say, Whitefish has in Luke Dalen, but he can chuck it. 

“He takes care of the ball, takes his shots when he as them and controls the offense,” Bollweg said. “He does a nice job.” 

Dalen was a force last week against Laurel, rushing for 155 yards and three TDs. The junior has passed for 1,167 yards and eight scores but has also ran for 745 and 18 TDs. 

Senior running back Cole Moses has another 900 yards and eight TDs rushing while also catching two touchdowns. Add in Vlad Shestak and his 36 catches for 583 yards and the Bulldogs are in pick-your-poison territory; Shestak had a 38-yard end around for a score in Laurel. 

“The kids just played so well,” Bollweg, whose club held Locomotive tailback Curtis Fox to 74 yards last week, said. “They matched our game plan with what they knew they wanted to do, did it with some passion and intensity, and that showed up Friday night.  

“I’m just proud of them and the way they’ve continued to grow as a team. It’s all happening at the right time for us.” 

Eureka at Manhattan 

The numbers pop out for the unbeaten Manhattan Tigers, who vanquished Malta 12-7 last week in a rematch of last season’s Class B title game. 

As in No. 1 (Matthew Fenno), No. 10 (Brayden Zikmund) and No. 18 (quarterback Tyson Pavlik). 

Zikmund is a junior with 951 yards at receiver and 10 interceptions at safety for the 10-0 Tigers; he has 18 touchdowns this season, and made a circus catch during Manhattan’s game-winning drive last week.  

Fenno had 588 receiving yards, another seven interceptions in the secondary and nine touchdowns. Marshall Friese (No. 2) and Pavlik are neck-and-neck as the team’s leading rushers, at 545 and 565 yards; Pavlik has thrown for 1,700. 

“And they have a really good lineman, No. 54 (Brady Toner),” Eureka coach Kenny Kindel said. “He’s probably one of the better defensive linemen in the state.” 

Toner has six sacks; Landyn Sargeant has nine and Casen Toner four. Pavlik has made life tough for his opposite number with 11 sacks. 

Eureka (8-2) has put up great numbers as well: Quarterback Rogan Lytle has thrown for 900 yards, run for 1,160 and on defense has 15.5 tackles for loss. 

Josh Lambertsen has 11 touchdowns and 677 yards on the ground; Emmet McKim, Timmy Schmidt and Tyce Van Orden are among Lytle’s favorite receiving targets. 

McKim has a team-high 92 stops to lead the defense. 

The Lions held down a potent Red Lodge offense last week, allowing 235 yards — and just 18 to top-flight running back Kooper Kappel. 

Now comes another big task, taming the Tigers. 

“I think they’re going to be the best team we’ve faced this year,” Kindel said. “They’re No. 1. But we were the underdog last week. It will be an uphill battle but we’ll be as prepared as we can be for it.”