by Scott Sacry, Sports Editor
The coaching staff for the Corvallis track & field team has a ritual they do every year.
“On the bus ride home from the state track meet we get together as a staff and make our predictions on how many points we’re going to have at next year’s state meet,” said Spencer Huls, the Corvallis head track coach. “We started doing this in 2009 and have been doing it every year since. It’s part of our mentality. It’s a way of putting this year in the rearview and starting to work on the next. I think I have all those pieces of paper filed away somewhere.”
Every once in a while in Montana high school sports, a school has a run of dominance. A specific confluence of athletes, coaches and community creates a program that produces winning teams year after year.
Corvallis track head coach Spencer Huls was named the 2025 Coach of the Year for Boys Class A Track & Field by the Montana Coaches Association (MCA). Huls has now won the MCA Coach of the Year for Track & Field 17 times (both girls and boys). Photo courtesy of MCA.
In Montana high school sports, certain schools come to mind: Butte High wrestling (17 titles); Florence girls softball (12 titles); Huntley girls volleyball (16 titles); and Billings Central girls soccer (11 titles), to name a few.
The Corvallis track & field program is squarely in this category.
The Corvallis boys won their 9th state title this spring. This win gave the Corvallis boys and girls track teams 18 total titles – the girls have also won nine titles. The boys won titles in 1977, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2018, 2023, 2024, and 2025. The girls won titles in 1974, 2011-2016, 2023, and 2024. Both teams won the title in the same year in 2012, 2015, 2023, and 2024.
The Corvallis boys track & field team with their 2025 Class A State trophy. The Corvallis boys and girls have won 18 total state championships in their history. Photo courtesy of Spencer Huls.
Spencer Huls has been Corvallis’s track & field head coach for 16 of those titles. Last week Huls was named the 2025 Coach of the Year for Boys Class A Track & Field by the Montana Coaches Association (MCA). Huls has now won the Coach of the Year for Track & Field 17 times (both girls and boys). Huls was inducted into the Montana Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2022.
Huls graduated high school from Corvallis in 1997. After college, where Huls played football, he came back to be a teacher in Corvallis. Huls didn’t want to get into coaching right away, rather he wanted to focus on teaching first. But that first spring he agreed to be a volunteer coach for track. He then became the boys head coach the following year in 2004. In 2008, Huls became the head coach for both the boys and girls, and he has held that position ever since.
Every winning program has a certain overall philosophy that drives it.
“Our philosophy came early on from coach Mark Yoakam, a Corvallis assistant track coach from 2007-2021,” said Huls. “It’s essentially that ‘track has to be important’. It sounds simple, but when things get hard, it’s not so easy. It might be more fun to play pick up basketball or do something else, but if you commit to being on the track team, then it needs to be important and a priority.”
Huls continued, “We win because we do the right things, not the other way around. We may not always have the most talented teams, and we might not always win, but if we do the right things first, it gives us a better chance.”
Assistant coaches play a major role in a track team’s success, since there are so many different events. The Corvallis assistant coaches have a wealth of experience. They are Tina Moore (1999-present), Brock Hammill (2004-present), Garrett Middleton (2005-present), Alyce Leonardi (2022-present), and Jessica Wetzsteon (2023-present).
Many of the assistant coaches have been with Huls since he started, and this longevity has fueled the program’s success.
“I like to say we have six head coaches,” said Huls. “I’m the one who gets my name in the paper, but many of the decisions have already been made before I hear about them. All the coaches have bought into our philosophy and are on the same page, which gives our program great consistency.”
Huls still has a fire for teaching and coaching and is enthusiastic about the future.
“I’m still excited to help the players and the program and the school be successful, and I think we can still put some more trophies up on the wall.”
Huls and all five of the assistant coaches are teachers in Corvallis, and Huls sees this as a big advantage.
“You get to know the kids and make connections with them everyday,” said Huls. “If I see someone walking down the hall and they look like they could be an athlete, or even if I just haven’t talked with them before, I’ll go up to them and introduce myself and say ‘My name is Coach Huls, what are you doing in the spring?’”