The season is over.

It’s time for all Bulldog football players to hang up their helmets, dry out their cleats and, for many of them, jump right in to basketball or wrestling practice.

Montesano’s season ended with a playoff loss, as do most seasons for successful teams, but the story of the 2016 Montesano High School football season was not a road loss to the third ranked team in the state.

The story of this season was accomplishments, both for individuals and for the team.

The story of this season was exceeding expectations.

But even more than that, the story of this season was effort, intensity and teamwork, which should make current and former Bulldogs as well as Bulldog fans and parents proud.

It’s tough to watch players walk off the field after a loss at the end of the season, and it’s tough, even as just a spectator, to watch seniors walk off the gridiron for the last time in their high school careers.

Losing is hard and accepting that it’s over is even harder, but this group of Bulldogs has nothing to hang their heads about. They provided us with high-energy, entertaining football week in and week out this season.

So, as a fan and a fly on the wall, thank you Bulldogs, for providing me and my family with fun times and fond memories.

A LOOK BACK

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the dominant, undefeated regular season and forget the preseason dialogue.

None of us really knew what to expect from the Bulldogs this year. Last year’s state semifinal squad was senior laden.

This year, Monte’s coaches were tasked with replacing a two-way all-state lineman, Hutton Napier; one of the most explosive (if not the most explosive) playmakers I’ve seen while covering high school football, Kylar Prante; a consummate leader and excellent all-around athlete, Logan Truax; an all-state kicker, Connor Lovell, and a host of other senior contributors.

Carson Klinger, then a sophomore, was the only non-senior who played significant minutes at a skill position. Even then, Klinger was behind Prante, Truax, Kyle Englund and Jake Herzog on the ball carrying depth chart.

My thoughts before the season started were, “I think the Bulldogs will be pretty good, but we’ll have to see how they fill all those holes.”

Then, right before our eyes, we started to see some players emerge into the roles left vacant by their predecessors.

Trevor Ridgway went from being a good thrower to a true leader and signal caller. Klinger, Dakoyta Reninger and Nathan Olson stepped in and proved to be a formidable three-headed monster of offensive production. Ben Lopez was thrust into a placekicking role due to an injury and became basically automatic on extra points.

Taylor Rupe filled perhaps the largest hole by taking over as the Bulldogs’ most dominant force in the trenches, casting his foes about with Napier-like strength.

From a guy who enjoys great line play, Taylor, thank you for your effort and for always playing with passion.

The bottom line is, these Bulldogs answered the bell. They were faced with a big challenge this season and they met it head on, unintimidated.

They rolled through the regular season unblemished and took down Hoquiam in what was supposed to be the Grizzlies’ year.

A LOOK AHEAD

It’s exciting to think about next season.

Although this year’s team contained many key contributing seniors, there are also several juniors who will be fun to watch as seniors.

Klinger, Reninger and Ridgway all will be seniors next year, which means the Bulldogs will have a lot of experience at quarterback and running back. Another junior who became increasingly impressive as the season progressed is Jared Wallace, who played offensive line and linebacker.

There are also several players who I think could step up next year as juniors, including Larry Dwyer, Shaydon Farmer, Evan Bates and Ben Sowers.

So, as we put a pin in the 2016 season, let’s look back on the fun and success this team had and look forward to the promise of next season’s team.

Best wishes to the athletes who are participating in sports this winter.

Go ’Dogs.