Switching lanes

By TIM DUMAS Chronicle Sports Writer

Scott Hill is not retiring. He’s simply making what he calls a “career pivot.”

SEAN SPERRY/CHRONICLE Belgrade High track coach Scott Hill is retiring from a 17-year career of coaching and teaching at Belgrade High. Hill is taking a job July 1 with State Farm Insurance in Belgrade, ending a span of 25 years at three schools. He will remain in the city where he spent the past 17 years coaching various sports and teaching biology, but there will be no more papers to grade and no more whistles to blow.

“I’m really going to miss my kids,” Hill, Belgrade High’s boys track and field coach, said.

The lifestyle change shouldn’t come as a total shock, however. Hill already has experience in that department.

While he was a teacher/coach at Dillon’s Beaverhead County High School in 1989, Hill was diagnosed with cancer. He and wife, Sue, had two young daughters at the time n one 3, the other two months.

Unexpected? If you were 28 and had just seen the doctor regarding a bout with pneumonia, how would the words “Hodgkin’s lymphoma” sound?

“It was like I was hit by a 2-by-4,” Scott Hill said Monday.

Hill wasn’t completely in the dark when it came to the disease. Two of his students n one a nephew of Judy Martz, who went on to become governor of Montana n had been diagnosed with the same illness.

Hill still had to go through the rigorous treatments: chemotherapy every two weeks in Missoula, followed by three weeks of daily radiation in Butte. The radiation treatments were originally scheduled to come with a break halfway through in order to keep his skin from burning.

But Hill stubbornly would have none of it. He was Dillon’s girls basketball coach at the time, the season was fast approaching and he didn’t want to miss a single practice.

His body paid for that decision n he had burns all over.

“I took my coaching and my teaching probably more serious than I should have,” Hill, 47, said. “A more intelligent person might have said, ‘Let’s take a little break here.’”

His do-everything-now approach came from growing up on the family’s hay and cattle ranch near Drummond. Hill’s father, Lewis, not only worked the ranch, but was the area’s television repairman.

Lewis Hill, now 81, is a member of the Montana State Trapshooting Association Hall of Fame.

“He was a busy guy,” Scott said. “He was always looking to make things better family-wise.”

Scott Hill’s own family began to take shape the week he graduated from the University of Montana in 1983. In addition to receiving a diploma, he became engaged and took his first teaching/coaching job in Scobey.

He was there for a year, and then spent seven in Dillon before coming to Belgrade in 1991. During his time as a Panther, Hill has coached girls basketball, football, cross country and, of course, track. Hill has served as an assistant or head coach for track for 25 years.

And now it’s coming to an end. It started to hit him on Saturday on the ride home from the divisional meet in Havre.

“Just looking around the bus and seeing some of the kids that didn’t make it to state,” Hill said, “and knowing that was going to be the last time I was going to see some of those kids. It’s going to be the same way after state.”

This weekend’s Class A state meet won’t include a long bus trip, because the site is Bozeman High School. That will afford Sue Hill a chance to stop by, and one of the couple’s daughters, Shelby, who just finished her freshman year at Washington State, might do the same. Older daughter Lindsay is taking after her father: She will graduate from Eastern Washington University next month and is getting married in October.

Scott and Sue Hill will celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary on July 30. While that relationship continues, Scott’s bond with Belgrade High is just about over. And a strong bond it was.

Cancer has a way of tightening up personal connections.

“I think of my students and my athletes as my family. Any battles that I’ve had with administrators over the years, I probably should have sat them down and explained to them where I come from,” he said with a laugh. “If there’s something where I think that the kids aren’t being treated fairly, in my eyes, I will question that. And that’s probably gotten me a few enemies around the school district. But I’ve always pushed for them.”

The same is true for his family.

“If I didn’t have my priorities in line before then,” he said of his cancer experience, “I sure did after.”

The competition

This weekend, Belgrade’s girls are going for their third straight title and fourth in eight years. The Panthers won last week’s Central A divisional by 41 points and have one of the top throwers in the state: Brittney Harvey.

The senior owns Class A’s top distance in the shot put and discus and her 41-foot, 1-inch shot put heave ranks her second in the state. Kirsten Haas is ranked No. 2 in the class for the 100-meter hurdles.

Ashley Ferda is ranked No. 1 in that event. The senior won that race, plus the javelin, at the Northwestern A divisional and her Whitefish team will be one of Belgrade’s main foes, along with Hamilton and Polson.

For the boys, Laurel has a shot at wiping out the disappointment of finishing second to Libby last season n by one point. Senior Patrick Casey owns the state’s top times in the 1,600 and 3,200. He won both events and the 800 at last weekend’s Eastern A meet. Seth Marshall (200, 400) also won two races.

Other Class A boys who enter this weekend with a state-high time or distance include: Polson’s Logan Torgison (800, 1:56.88); Hardin’s Jake Bowman (pole vault, 15-1); Billings Central’s Casey McMillan (shot put, 56-6); Libby’s Seth Wright (high jump, 6-7) and Corvallis’ Slater Powell (110 hurdles, 14.68).

Tim Dumas is at tdumas@dailychronicle.com and 582-2651.

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