When Chad Montgomery starred in football at Bellevue High School in the late 1990s, he was part of a relatively seamless operation.
From week to week and year to year for four years, things pretty much went according to plan at Bellevue. Aside from some unfortunate injuries and occasionally the weather, Bellevue’s football seasons had a penchant for proceeding normally. Contests were scheduled and practices were held. Games were played and they were won or lost. Valuable lessons were learned from the same head coach year after year.
“That was a long time ago,” said Montgomery, now in his second season as Bellevue head coach.
The 42-year-old Montgomery, also a teacher at Bellevue, is a forward-looking person. But he can be forgiven if he pines for the good old days when the range of outcomes under his former coach Charlie Coleman seemed comparatively small. Nowadays, the Tigers seem to find themselves at the mercy of a myriad of complications, through no fault of their own, with an unusual mix of results.
“It’s been 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 foreshadow the odyssey to come for the Tigers. They lost to Eminence in the 2023 season opener. The result was later reversed to a forfeit in favor of Bellevue due to a self-reported ineligible Eminence player. It was the third forfeit in a row involving Bellevue, bridging two seasons.
“That never happens,” said Montgomery who was hired after the Tigers forfeited their final two games of 2022 due to lack of players.
UNUSUAL MEANS TO AN END
Bellevue entered 2023 on a 15-game losing streak therefore becoming that rare team to break a double-digit skid with a forfeit win. To say the streak-busting victory was anti-climactic feels like an understatement, especially when considering the forfeit was announced more than a week after the game was played.
Bellevue had to wait until the third game of 2023 to earn its first win on the football field since Sept. 17, 2021. The Tigers defeated Riverview East (OH), 32-22. The official scores of their previous four games were 8-6, 1-0, 1-0 and 1-0, which look more like Bellevue baseball scores.
“That’s definitely not normal,” said Montgomery.
After Riverview East, the 3-1 start to the 2023 season was swallowed by a five-game losing streak. The Tigers finished 4-7 in Montgomery’s first year back at his alma mater, their best record since 2018. That doesn’t say much for Bellevue’s success just prior to Montgomery’s return. From 2019 to 2022, the Tigers went 2-9, 0-8, 1-10 and 0-9 for a combined record of 3-36.
That’s not normal either. But it was a new normal that Montgomery wanted to shatter with a winning Bellevue football team, something he experienced all the time in a Tigers uniform.
By now, however, the coach is wondering what is normal at Bellevue.
SEEKING NORMALCY AND RESPECTABILITY
The COVID year was 2020. That ushered in three Bellevue years of steep decline including 2021 and 2022. There was the rollercoaster ride of 2023.
“It’s definitely been tough, but we’ve made adaptions,” junior lineman Patrick Vogt said. “As players, we just keep working hard and be prepared to play the next game.”
Nothing could prepare the Tigers for what they experienced this year, and the drama began before the season did.
“We were supposed to play Grant County in a bowl game in the season opener and I’m preparing all summer to play Grant first,” Montgomery said. “But it got switched about a month before the game and now we’re scheduled to play Eminence again in the opener. We lost to Eminence. It was pretty frustrating.”
It was only the beginning. The 2024 Bellevue football team had a game to the south cancelled by an active roadside shooter. The Tigers had a game to the north moved twice due to gun violence in the surrounding neighborhood. With their schedule scuttled, they didn’t play for an unprecedented 24 days. They declined an offer from a Cincinnati-area team to fill one of the holes in their schedule because of continued gun violence.
“Being a senior, it was annoying to be off the field for that long. I was mad,” said captain Brayden Sizemore, team leader in tackles and receiving yards. “Sometimes it seems like we’re always working uphill. All I want is a normal year.”
He didn’t get it.
2024: ANOTHER FOOTBALL ODYSSEY
After the Eminence loss, the Tigers routed Trimble County and Pendleton County for a 2-1 start to the season. They had momentum at their backs heading into the Sept. 14 contest at Lynn Camp, a team they defeated 34-20 last year.
The game never happened. It was cancelled five days after a lone gunman fired at least 20 rounds at passing cars from a Kentucky highway overpass, wounding five people, as they traveled on Interstate 75, a major part of Bellevue’s path to Lynn Camp High School. The gunman eluded capture, sparking a manhunt. His decomposed body wasn’t found until Sept. 18.
“It was a mutual decision between schools to cancel but we couldn’t tell the team we weren’t playing Lynn Camp until 3 p.m. Thursday,” Montgomery said. “Up until then, we practiced as if we were going to play and kept things as normal as possible for the team. We talked about moving the game to Middlesboro or Bell County but decided not to.”
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 No. 1 job is protecting my players. We cancelled the contract for the charter bus and we didn’t travel at all.”
The Tigers’ bye week included Friday, Sept. 20, yet they wanted to play. But they were unable to line up an opponent on short notice as a means 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 moved up two hours to a 5 p.m. start with a daylight finish after gun violence escalated in that part of the city.
“The game was postponed three hours before kickoff,” Montgomery said. “Pregame meals were packed. Everything was ready to go.”
Bellevue and Gamble looked at a Saturday alternative, but conditions were deemed too windy, wet and unsafe after remnants of Hurricane Helene swept through the area. The game was ultimately played Monday, Sept. 30. The Tigers won, 46-0, reversing last year’s outcome, a 57-8 loss to Gamble.
Montgomery can’t remember the last time he played or coached a high school game on a Monday, but he knows he doesn’t like it. The coach had to get his Tigers prepared to play Ludlow just four days after beating Gamble. They paid the price, losing 43-0. Adding oddity to insult, the Tigers were facing a team coached by a former Bellevue head coach for the second game in a row.
As Montgomery has been saying a lot lately, that’s not normal.
Bellevue bounced back to beat district rival Dayton, 42-0, in the annual Battle for the Paddle. The Tigers fell to Newport in an Oct. 18 district contest. Through all the ups and downs and shocking developments, Bellevue sports a 4-3 record entering Thursday’s 7 p.m. district showdown against Newport Central Catholic at Dixie Heights. Four victories equal the Tigers win total all of last season. They host Jackson County in the regular season finale. One more victory gives Bellevue its winningest season in six years.
Ah, those sepia-toned days of 2018. Montgomery, who was in his eighth coaching season at Dayton that year, said it might be the last “normal” football season at Bellevue. The Tigers finished 5-6 that season with no major disturbances that he knows of until coach Woody McMillen resigned. They fell on hard times the next year and things only got worse from there. Not until Montgomery arrived on the scene did the Tigers start regaining some of their swagger. Then life happened, again and again.
CHASING WINS
For Sizemore, the collision of football and life has resulted in a high school football career full of too many thunderbolts. Yet his love for the game and his teammates has fueled a tremendous desire to rise above the 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 produced results.
Sizemore has played in more winning Bellevue games the last two seasons than the Tigers won during a five-year span from 2018 through 2022.
During yet another season of surprises, the Tigers will take the positives where they can, and soldier on. The resilience of the team in the face of ongoing challenges has been something to behold, according to Vogt.
“It’s sad to see what’s happening around us,” Vogt said. “We wanted a normal season. But the attitude now is whatever is thrown at us, we’ll handle it and then go out and win some games.”
