BILLINGS — Perhaps it was a thrilling victory in the season opener that set the stage for West Yellowstone's goals to come into clearer focus.
Or maybe it was the boys taking the school to its first-ever state basketball tournament six months earlier.
Whatever the case may be, the Wolverines, who are 6-0 and ranked No. 5 in the MTN Sports 6-Man power rankings, are riding some kind of wave. And they're gradually piecing together one of the best seasons in program history.
"Sky's the limit," West coach Martin Drube told MTN Sports. "We think we've got a pretty good opportunity that we can go beat anybody. But it's just how we prepare each and every week."
Nothing could have prepared the Wolverines for what happened in Week 1, when they pulled off a 53-52 victory over Power-Dutton-Brady. It was one of those games in which the team that had the ball last was likely to prevail.
Sure enough, West Yellowstone got the ball with about 40 seconds left and drove the length of the field to score the winning points, a touchdown pass to Zeke Markov.
The team won another thriller later in the year, a 68-57 shootout over Big Sandy. The formula for this year's success is built on experience.
"We've got a bunch of kids that returned from last year," Drube said. "We've got two seniors. We've got three juniors, but last year we didn't lose anybody, so we're returning all of our starters.
"Last year we had a handful of games where we dressed seven kids. We had one game where we finished with five kids. So through all that adversity, our kids prevailed. We've got lots of guys that are returning as starters that have three to four years of starting."
Offensively, the Wolverines are on a roll. They haven't scored fewer than 50 points in a game yet this year. Abrams Clark has thrown 34 touchdown passes and rushed for eight others. Ben Clark has hauled in 11 TDs.
Defensively, Ben Clark has picked off five passes and recovered three fumbles.
It's all come together for West on the gridiron this year. But don't discount the effect of the 2025-26 basketball season, when the Wolverines won three games at the Western C divisional to advance to the state tournament for the first time in their history.
"After we saw what we could accomplish in basketball, we were going forward to accomplish it in football, as well," said senior lineman Rodrigo Salinas. "We're getting better each week, going 1-0 each week, and we kept finding new things to fix. These last two weeks are probably our biggest weeks that we have to face."
As the regular season reaches its climax, West Yellowstone has two games remaining — this week against Shields Valley and then a massive finale against No. 3 Absarokee, a contest that will decide the Southwest division title.
Beyond that, West hasn't been to a state title game since 1999, when it lost 46-8 to Blue Sky-Kremlin-Gildford (now North Star) for the 6-Man crown.
But the Wolverines are trying to keep the focus on the next challenge, even with a division championship within reach. The game against Shields Valley is a chance to sharpen the details and make sure the team isn’t looking too far ahead; Drube has stressed that West’s playoff hopes will depend on its preparation.
The players agree.
"I think it's going to take continued hard work, even throughout the playoffs," said junior receiver and safety Ben Clark. "We had some hardships and stuff through the beginning of the season, all the conditioning, and that's really just going to have to continue throughout playoffs to keep us tip-top shape and ready for whatever team comes our way."
Added Drube: "We're resilient, you know? We've been tested, and we're trying to go 1-0 on the week and just trying to execute. Just being everybody on the same page to go execute and execute at a high level in crunch time."
