575 Miles to Missoula: Football Super Fans Never Miss a Griz Game

By Cary Shimek, UM News Service

MISSOULA – If Griz football fandom were measured in miles, few could match Brad and Carol Holm.

The couple hail from the Plentywood area in far eastern Montana. For those not in the know, Plentywood (population 1,600) neighbors Canada and North Dakota. More specifically, the Holms live in the nearby Plentywood suburb of Reserve (population 30).

When they hit the road, it's 575 miles one way to Missoula, the University of Montana and their beloved Washington-Grizzly Stadium. And since they retired and purchased season tickets in 2012, they’ve never missed a home game.

“Brad and I just get so excited about Griz games,” Carol said. “We have friends who have retirement homes down in Arizona, but we tell people that doing this is our Arizona. And we’ve made so many great friends over the years.”

The saying goes that Montana is one big small town with really long streets. For the Holms, their main street winds across the Hi-Line through Malta and Havre, down to Great Falls and over Rogers Pass, before cruising into the heart of Griz Nation.

And the super fans have a stylish new ride for their epic drives. They just purchased a maroon and gray 2018 Ram ProMaster van, which they promptly paid to decorate with trademarked Griz logos and paws just in time for Homecoming. The van is tall enough for tailgaters to stand upright inside.

Brad said when they saw the van for sale with its inspiring colors in Billings, it was meant to be – love at first sight.

“We took it around the block, stopped back and bought it,” he said with a laugh. “Now, with the new look, we probably wouldn’t leave it sitting out overnight in Bozeman.”

Brad’s UM ties go way back. His older sister was a Griz, and he completed a few quarters at UM as a student in the 1970s, but illness and a broken arm derailed his college career. (Though he does tell a funny story from that time about how he and three “loaded” buddies had to get out and push their rear-wheel-drive car up a snowy Roger’s Pass one night so they could make it back to campus.)

Carol, who grew up in Dagmar (another Plentywood-area burg, population 30), admits to doing some student time at a college in Bozeman, but her relationship with Brad helped her switch allegiance early on. Now both 70 years old, the two have been together for 55 years and married for 48.

Brad was lured from campus to work in the oil patch, and then took over a fertilizer business, Community Oil Co., which he operated for 40 years. The couple also were part of a crew that banded together to save the last watering hole in their little town, The Reserve Bar. Brad thought they would only need a few months to save it, but they wound up co-owning the place for more than a decade.

After early retirement in 2012, Brad and Carol really started crisscrossing the state for Griz games. From then on, they’ve driven far enough in Montana to circle the Earth 4.5 times or drive halfway to the moon.

But they’ve been coming to the games for far longer than that. They remember attending a Griz-Cat game at Washington-Grizzly Stadium 40 years ago, when the “Mecca of FCS football” was newly built. They came with their good friend, Kevin Paulson, who ran track as a UM student, and his wife, Norma, who also joined them for many games.

The Paulson name should tickle the brains of Griz fans. The Paulsons are a prominent Plentywood family – overflowing with great athletes – and Kevin Paulson’s younger brother, Craig, was the Griz player who started the tradition of handing down his No. 37 to another teammate from the state of Montana. The Holms know the Paulsons well and attended many games with Kevin over the years – until cancer stole him way too early back in 2007, and folks were asked to wear Griz gear to his funeral.

Brad and Carol aren’t intimidated by long miles and white-knuckle winter driving. Such things are just part of eastern Montana life. But it is a long trip across Montana, and they admit to sometimes lingering in the Missoula area between games if the Griz have back-to-back homestands.

Once outside the stadium, they are part of a long-established tailgate situated near the Griz practice bubble. The tailgate was started by Dennis and Val Sulser of Billings. (Val hails from Medicine Lake – population 240 – which also isn’t far from Plentywood.) Most of the two dozen tailgate “partners” who attend have roots in northeast Montana, and they have even dubbed themselves the “Northeast Flatlanders.” The group includes the Holms’ daughter Lindsey Brensdal, son-in-law Ryan and two granddaughters, Briar and Brikotah.

Besides the fancy new Griz van, the tailgate sports multiple canopies, a TV, excellent chairs and at least four coolers for drinks. Food tends toward sloppy Joes or Albertson chicken.

The tailgate presents as a high-functioning operation, but the Holms admit that hasn’t always been the case.

“We had an incident one time,” Brad said. “It was a cold game – like 20 below – and one of our partners wanted a keg of beer. They thought that would be good. But we had a hell of a blizzard, and the keg froze up. So we wound up using it as a weight to hold up a tent wall at the tailgate.”

With the wind blowing, someone had the bright idea to try thawing the keg over the firepit.

“Well, we unhooked the thing from the tent, and the tent blew over,” Brad said. “That started a fire. It was definitely more excitement than we wanted.”

The Holms often arrive days early for games to gather with members of their extended Griz family. They meet with a group of fans from Spokane, Washington, at the Missoula “Mo” Club on Friday afternoons. They also regularly inhabit the Press Box sports bar across the river from the stadium, and they are lifelong friends of former owner Gordi Fix. In fact, they recently took a photo at the Press Box with current Griz head coach Bobby Kennedy, whom they’ve gotten to know.

When the Holms finally reach their season-ticket seats inside the stadium, they are eight rows back on the 30-yard line, right behind the home team.

For them, it’s all their little slice of Griz heaven – the centerpiece of their retirement lifestyle.

“More than anything, it’s the people and social stuff that keep us coming back,” Brad said.

“It’s nice to be free to travel anytime we want,” Carol adds. “We’ve got a lot of Griz family.”

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Contact: Brad and Carol Holm, Griz football super fans, bradcarolh@gmail.com.