How The Helena Senators Navigated Through This Season

This season was much different than usual for all of the American legion teams around the state of Montana and for the Helena Senators there was a lot of unknown at the beginning. “Before we ever got started multiple sources out there saying we weren’t going to be playing and just communicating with the kids that we were doing something different than the national that was probably the hardest part early was keeping the kids focused and in because they kept hearing that our season was canceled and I’d get multiple texts a day saying ‘hey coach were not playing what’s going on’,” Jon Burnett said. The senators got off to a one and four start in conference play but then came the Bozeman Heros Park Invitational where everything clicked and the team won the entire thing. “It made the coaching easy you know everybody hits going into a gap the dugout was up, I think at one point they switched pitchers and I look over and we had 12 guys standing out there with bats timing up the new pitcher it was kind of crazy, it is something I had never seen…That was our first time staying in a hotel this year so that was…As a coach you’re a little bit hesitant on what you do, it wasn’t the normal hotel stay for us we didn’t do any restaurants we didn’t make the team out for anything,” Burnett said. Just when you thought the twist and turns were in the rear-view mirror, the team was told less than a week before the state tournament, that it would be moving to billings. “We had gone the whole season planning on hosting state putting in lots of time and effort and our program had lots of expenses we had to make sure we had more concessions and everything…I get a text from one of our board members so I run and check my email and sure enough, there was our denial from the county and I was it was a gut punch for sure,” Burnett said. The team went on an incredible run at State that featured a Cy Miller and Tyler Tenny no-hitter but they ended up losing in the championship game to Bozeman.