The Bellevue Football Team’s Roller Coaster Season: A Story Full of Surprises

When Chad Montgomery played football at Bellevue High School in the late 1990s, he was part of a relatively smooth process.

For four years, things at Bellevue went largely according to plan from week to week and year to year. Aside from a few unfortunate injuries and occasional weather, Bellevue’s football season was pretty normal. Competitions were planned and exercises were held. Games were played and won or lost. Year after year, valuable lessons have been learned from the same head coach.

“It’s been a long time,” said Montgomery, now in his second season as Bellevue’s head coach.

Montgomery, 42, also a teacher at Bellevue, is a forward-thinking person. But he can be forgiven for remembering the good old days, when the range of results seemed comparatively small under his former coach Charlie Coleman. These days, the Tigers appear to be subject to a host of unforced complications, with unusually mixed results.

“It was pretty crazy,” Montgomery said.

Take last year for example. Bellevue hired Montgomery, its fourth head coach in six years, to right the ship after four forgettable seasons. It took one game to predict the odyssey ahead for the Tigers. They lost to Eminence in the 2023 season opener. The result was later reversed to a loss in Bellevue’s favor due to a self-declared ineligible Eminence player. It was the third consecutive loss involving Bellevue and bridged two seasons.

“That never happens,” said Montgomery, who was hired after the Tigers lost their final two games of 2022 due to a lack of players.

UNUSUAL MEANS TO AN PURPOSE

Bellevue began 2023 with a 15-game losing streak, becoming the rare team to break a double-digit deficit with a losing streak. To say the series-breaking win was disappointing seems to be an understatement, especially considering the loss was announced more than a week after the game.

Bellevue had to wait until the third game of 2023 to get its first win on the football field since September 17, 2021. The Tigers defeated Riverview East (OH) 32-22. The official scores of the last four games were 8-6, 1-0, 1-0 and 1-0, which is more similar to Bellevue’s baseball results.

“This is definitely not normal,” Montgomery said.

After Riverview East’s 3-1 start to the 2023 season was swallowed by a five-game losing streak. The Tigers finished Montgomery’s first year back at his alma mater at 4-7, their best record since 2018. That doesn’t say much about Bellevue’s success shortly before Montgomery’s return. From 2019 to 2022, the Tigers went 2-9, 0-8, 1-10 and 0-9, for an overall record of 3-36.

That’s not normal either. But it was a new normal that Montgomery wanted to break through with a winning Bellevue football team, something he experienced constantly in a Tigers jersey.

However, the coach is now wondering what is normal at Bellevue.

Looking for normality and respectability

The COVID year was 2020. That brought three Bellevue years of steep decline, including 2021 and 2022. There was the rollercoaster ride of 2023.

“It was definitely tough, but we made adjustments,” junior lineman Patrick Vogt said. “As players, we just keep working hard and getting ready for the next game.”

Nothing could prepare the Tigers for what they experienced this year, and the drama began before the season even began.

“We were supposed to play Grant County in a bowl game in the season opener, and I’ve been preparing all summer to play Grant first,” Montgomery said. “But it was changed about a month before the game and now the plan is for us to play Eminence again in the opening game. We lost to Eminence. It was pretty frustrating.”

It was just the beginning. A 2024 Bellevue football team game in the South was canceled by an active shooter on the side of the road. Due to gun violence in the surrounding neighborhood, the Tigers’ game had to be moved north twice. With their schedule thrown into disarray, they didn’t play for an unprecedented 24 days. They declined a Cincinnati-area team’s offer to fill a gap in their schedule because gun violence continued.

“As a senior, it was annoying not being on the field for so long. I was crazy,” said captain Brayden Sizemore, team leader in tackles and receiving yards. “Sometimes it seems like we are always working uphill. All I want is a normal year.”

He didn’t understand it.

2024: ANOTHER FOOTBALL ODYSSEY

After the loss to Eminence, the Tigers defeated Trimble County and Pendleton County to start the season 2-1. They had momentum going into Lynn Camp on Sept. 14, a team they defeated 34-20 last year.

The game never took place. The event was canceled for five days after a lone gunman fired at least 20 shots at passing cars on a highway overpass in Kentucky, wounding five people as they traveled on Interstate 75, a key part of Bellevue’s route to Lynn Camp High School. The shooter escaped capture, sparking a manhunt. His decomposed body was not found until September 18th.

“It was a mutual decision between the schools to cancel, but we weren’t able to tell the team until Thursday at 3 p.m. that we would be playing Lynn Camp,” Montgomery said. “Until then we trained as if we were playing and kept things as normal as possible for the team. We talked about moving the game to Middlesboro or Bell County but decided against it.”

The schools ruled out a Saturday meeting because it would have been the only high school football game in Kentucky that night and could have been a target for the shooter.

“Safety is a priority,” Montgomery said. “My most important job is to protect my players. We canceled the charter bus contract and didn’t travel at all.”

The Tigers’ bye week included Friday, September 20, but they still wanted to play. However, they were unable to field an opponent on short notice to get another game on the schedule to replace the lost Lynn Camp contest.

Hurry up and wait

The Sept. 27 game against Gamble Montessori at Western Hills High School in Cincinnati was originally scheduled for 7 p.m. It was pushed back two hours to start at 5 p.m. and end in daylight after gun violence escalated in that part of the city.

“The game was postponed three hours before kickoff,” Montgomery said. “The pre-game meals were full. Everything was ready to go.”

Bellevue and Gamble considered an alternative for Saturday, but conditions were deemed too windy, wet and unsafe after remnants of Hurricane Helene swept through the area. The game was finally played on Monday September 30th. The Tigers won 46-0, reversing last year’s result, a 57-8 loss to Gamble.

Montgomery can’t remember the last time he played or coached in a high school game on a Monday, but he knows he doesn’t like it. The coach had to prepare his Tigers for the game against Ludlow just four days after the win against Gamble. They paid the price and lost 0:43. What made the insult even stranger was that, for the second straight year, the Tigers were playing a team coached by a former Bellevue head coach.

As Montgomery has said many times lately, this isn’t normal.

Bellevue rebounded to defeat district rival Dayton 42-0 in the annual Battle for the Paddle. The Tigers lost to Newport in a district contest on October 18th. Despite all the ups and downs and shocking developments, Bellevue has a 4-3 record heading into Friday’s district showdown against Newport Central Catholic in Dixie Heights at 7 p.m. Four wins equals the Tigers’ win total all of last season. They host Jackson County in the regular season finale. Another win gives Bellevue its most successful season in six years.

Ah, those sepia-toned days of 2018. Montgomery, who entered his eighth coaching season at Dayton this year, said it could be the last “normal” football season in Bellevue. The Tigers finished 5-6 that season, with no major disruptions that he was aware of until coach Woody McMillen resigned. The next year they hit hard times and things only got worse from there. It wasn’t until Montgomery arrived on the scene that the Tigers regained some of their swagger. Then life kept happening.

Looking for victories

For Sizemore, the collision of football and life has led to a high school football career full of unexpected surprises. But his love for the game and his teammates fueled a tremendous desire to rise above difficult circumstances and lead Bellevue to victory.

“We just want to play football,” Sizemore said. “And we want to be successful.”

His can-do attitude has yielded results.

Sizemore has played more successful Bellevue games over the last two seasons than the Tigers won in a five-year period from 2018 to 2022.

In another season full of surprises, the Tigers will take the positives where they can and move on. Vogt said the team’s resilience in the face of ongoing challenges is impressive.

“It’s sad to see what’s happening around us,” said Vogt. “We wanted a normal season. But the mindset now is that we can handle whatever is thrown at us and then go out and win some games.”

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