OUT OF NOWHERE

Casey Fitzsimmons took his experience in Montana playing eight-man high school football all the way to the NFL.

Chester High School

The Chester Coyotes celebrate a 1998 state title.

[Ed's Note: This week, Rick Reilly writes about a team where most of the guys have to play both ways. Could that school develop an NFL player? They most certainly can.]

An easy way to find Chester, Montana is with a railroad map. They have them on Google. It's a little tougher to pick out on a road map because Chester is in northern Montana, a full thumb's width east of the green spot of Glacier Park, and a sideways middle finger west of Fargo. But along the railroad, it's a snap. It's simple, really. The railroad is in a straight line.

"All those little towns were built upon a railroad," says a local. "They were built because the steam engines needed water as they headed west, so you have these little outposts. Chester has a little more of a population because there's a high school and a small agricultural community."

Heading into town.

The local is Casey Fitzsimmons, who is also a local of Detroit. He's in his 6th year with the Lions where he starts occasionally at tight end and is a stalwart on special teams. When he arrived in Detroit, he was also just four years removed from a state championship. It was a game won on his home field in Chester in front of 1500 people, the biggest crowd he'd ever played in front of. He was a star that year, a good player on a 20-man team full of them. The field on which they played eight on eight stretched 80 yards by 40. Fitzsimmons played the whole game.

Coach Graham was there for that one state title, though he says the team is competitive pretty much every year. Chester High School, which currently has a student population of 84, is served by nine teachers. Graham is one. He multi-tasks.

"Right now I teach business, PE, am assistant coach for the football team and serve as the athletic director," he says. He also steps in for bus duty on occasions.

As assistant coach for years, Graham is a big part of game-planning. His team usually has about 20 players, a quarter of the whole student body. Eight-man football isn't all that much different from regular football, Fitzsimmons insists. "You just drop the two tackles and one wide receiver," he says. So you have your center, two guards and two tight ends. You can also drop in a fullback in place of a wide receiver. There are a number of options, really. Based on personnel, you think it'd make game-planning tricky.

"I'd play tight end, or maybe split out as a wide receiver, and then I'd hop over and play defensive end," he says. "If we dropped into a 3-4, some linebacker."

"A general game plan? Well, everybody's got their ideas on different systems they can run, but you have to look at your kids and see what works, and then also look at the other team and see what'll work against them," says Graham. "It's not like we're the Seahawks and can pick up the guys that fit our system." Graham chuckles. "Depending on who we're playing, I'll have a kid play left guard one week and fullback the next."

You can learn a lot of positions this way. Casey learned four.

"I'd play tight end, or maybe split out as a wide receiver, and then I'd hop over and play defensive end," he says. "If we dropped into a 3-4, some linebacker."

Fitzsimmons was about as locked into a single position in high school as he was to the idea that he'd be playing in the NFL someday. As a senior, he was an able 6-3 and 185 pounds, but he also saw football as a social opportunity and school duty. If you are able, you play sports year round. There's not enough kids, so the ones who can play do their part. He sat out his junior year injured. He and others on the team looked forward to post-practice, when they would run home to get their shotguns and poles and head for the fields and hills to hunt birds or fish. "In season, we'd have games on Friday, which was great because we'd have Saturday and Sunday to go deer hunting."

Getty Images

FitzSimmons with the Lions.

The games, however, were a big community event. Against a backdrop of the hills surrounding town, the team would play on that 80x40 field under the lights, and often more than half the town would huddle along the surrounding fences to watch. As the team moved up and down the field "the whole crowd would sort of follow us along the sidelines," says Casey.

Fitzsimmons was a standout on the basketball court, and thought he'd play at the next level for little NAIA Carroll College in southern Montana. Nobody had bothered to scout him for football. "Basketball was his first love, but we can't really afford to specialize here," says Graham, "We can't develop anybody in one sport, or the other teams suffer." In May of his senior year, Fitzsimmons suddenly had a change of heart and decided to pursue football. "I just had a gut feeling I could do it," he says. By the next fall, he was already a starter, and on his way to packing on another 60-plus pounds, muscle he'd carry to the NFL four years later.

Fitzsimmons is still tied to Montana. He visits often, and loves to go back every winter for ice fishing with old football pals, buddies who have only last names. There's Klein, Camon and Dolan. His cell phone still maintains the Chester area code of 406, one the town shares with the whole state.

He and his coach hope the town and school will survive—even thrive. Chester High School is actually decent-sized for their class. Other schools have a harder time fielding teams. But the town has struggled some. "The population kind of fluctuates with the price of grain. If grain is up there's a little money there. When it goes down, you'll see a lot of businesses that get washed out of town. So for the last ten years, the population has been declining," says Casey. "My folks actually moved out of there because of jobs." His dad was with John Deere, his mom sold insurance for State Farm.

After he made the NFL, Fitzsimmons went back to talk to his high school. A sign on the way into town lists the 1998 team among Chester's state champions. "In a small community, you're close-knit, and your teams and your kids are what you rally around and hang onto," says the coach. "Everybody has kept track of Casey. He's very special."

Chester High School

FitzSimmons as a Chester senior.

A product of eight-man football, and a school of 84 that once was 100 or more, and bus rides of up to eight hours in HS and 18 in college, he is an NFL anomaly, but also a possibility—even if he is a real-time NFL relic.

"I never really met anyone in the pros who came from that type of situation, such a small place and team, and eight-man football," says Fitzsimmons. Nobody? "You know, there was a guy drafted by the Packers named Scott Curry, like 6th round, but he tore up his knee and was done." Fitzsimmons is right, Curry played five games in the 1999 season, and was done.

Where'd he go to college?

"U of M."

That's … Missoula?

"Right. It's amazing, he was actually in our conference. So that's two of us."

Imagine, two NFL guys, eight-man football, one little area. It might as well be Seattle.

"He went to Valier," says Fitzsimmons "Right over by Conrad."

You can find it on the map.

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