Baseball is a big part of the Missoula community with two Legion teams (amateur athletic league): the Mavs (AA) and Post 15. There is also one club team, the Missoula bandits, and a minor league team, the Paddleheads.
Even though there are different teams around Missoula, none of the AA public schools (Sentinel, Hellgate, and Big Sky) have ever had a school baseball team for students to play on, except for this year.
Sentinel has already played three games, two of which have been at home (Bonner-Kelly Pine). They have been practicing for almost a month.
Integrating Baseball Into The School
Montana as a state has been playing baseball for only three years. The sport debuted in 2023, so it is a relatively new sport to Montana high schools.
The original plan was to introduce baseball to Sentinel in the 2025-2026 school year. In an interview with Sentinel’s athletic director Jannusch, he explained why the team started a year earlier, “There was a good push of support from the community that went to the school board who [asked] to start a year early, and to help with that [they] did all the fundraising for [the] first year”.
In this school year alone, ten teams across the state have been added to the East Central and South Division.
It was quite a process of papering baseball into the school, which started last fall in an interview with head coach Brian Moser. He said that “they are still trying to iron out all the wrinkles”, and Mr. Jannusch commented that “[It’s important that] we anticipate with a new program of a new sport and make sure they feel supported”.
The school has also revamped the 300 Building by getting more turf down and optimizing the space for the team to have more room to practice.
The Season So Far
This is the team’s first year being a part of Sentinel’s athletics, so it’s more of a building year to get established as a team. Sentinel’s first game of the season was against Hamilton, where they lost 15-0. It should be said that Hamilton has had a baseball team since the state has been playing baseball on a high school level.
Baseball is set up a lot differently than other school sports. Instead of playing by class, they play by division, so a class AA school could play a class C school, which can make it harder to organize, but gives the team more variety on who they play.
When asked, the head coach, Brian Moser, had this to say about how the season is going so far, “We have some room for improvement, [and] we have lost a couple of games, but we beat Hellgate, which is always a good thing to do”.
Sentinel beat Hellgate 10-2 on Thursday, March 27th, with that being their second game of the season. Sophomore Cole Jenkins was a star on the mound where he pitched three shutout innings and only had two hits in the fifth inning.
The team has 14 more guaranteed games if no cancellations happen until the state. The state tournament only allows eight teams to play for the all-class title.
To get to the state, they will have to either win their division (South) or win a `cross-divisional game. Currently, Sentinel is fourth in the South Division, and they have to move up at least one place to qualify for state.
The team is quite young and still has time to improve as the season goes on. Their coaches and the community are confident that they can show real growth by the end of the season and become a solid foundation for the next season.
