Two wins, four losses and two ties.

Many high school soccer teams wouldn't view that record in a positive light. But for the Missoula Big Sky boys and first-year head coach Jay Bostrom, standing at 2-4-2 is a major step in the right direction.

The truth is, recent history has been less than kind to the program.

After winning their first match of the 2006 season, the Eagles came away losers in their final 10 games. In 2007, Big Sky managed to win only their final match of the season before finishing 0-12-0 last year. Even this season began in familiar fashion as the Eagles started out by dropping their first four contests.

But after forging a 1-1 draw at home with Helena Capital on Sept. 19, Big Sky celebrated its first victory in 18 matches with a convincing 6-3 defeat of Western AA rival Missoula Sentinel three days later. That win just happened to come on the four-year anniversary of the Eagles' last crosstown victory, a 2-1 win over the same Spartans in 2005.

Now, after following up the win over Sentinel with a 3-1 victory over Kalispell Flathead and a 2-2 tie with Helena High on Tuesday, Big Sky is on a four-match unbeaten streak after winning just six times in the school's previous 53 matches dating back to the 2005 season.

"I think the thing is, this team from top to bottom has skill at every level," Bostrom said. "This team is made of of good players. They just needed a little time this year to start playing as a team and believing in themselves."

Changing a culture of losing is no easy task. But Bostrom and his staff, which includes assistant coaches Ian Hamilton and Ishmel Baied, have turned a perennial doormat into a team that looks to be peaking as it begins the stretch run to the end of the regular season.

After Thursday afternoon's match with undefeated Missoula Hellgate, the Eagles finish with Kalispell Glacier, which they fell to 2-1 on Sept. 15, before taking on Sentinel and Flathead, the teams they've already beaten.

"The thing that makes this team special is that they're not a team of individual greats," Bostrom said. "They understand that we don't reward individual talent. We're a team that sacrifices for each other. We reward those who want to win as a team, those who challenge every ball and put the team before themselves. The kids have bought into that and it's really refreshing."

No pain, no gain

The Missoula Hellgate volleyball team has been on a roll lately, and that's not a jab directed at head coach Courtney Callaghan, who tried to tough out what she thought was a rolled ankle last week.

The fourth-year coach, who plays alongside her team during practices, went up for a block during one of the Knights' intrasquad scrimmages and came down on the foot of one of her players across the net last Wednesday.

"I was trying to prove a point that sprained ankles happen, it's not a big deal, so I was very tough and walked out of the gym," Callaghan said. "I thought I was fine and then the next evening I went to the hospital and it was broken. So maybe I'm not that tough. But I called it my walk-it-off mentality."

Hellgate lost to Western AA leader Helena High on Friday, the same night that Callaghan discovered her left foot was broken, but a shake-it-off mentality helped the Knights bounce back to beat previously ranked Sentinel in three games in a rowdy crosstown match on the Spartans' court on Tuesday.

Afterward Callaghan couldn't hide her smile any more than she could her walking boot.

"It's funny," she said. "The (players) have been very protective of me. Every time we do a drill or something they're like 'Coach, watch out.' They just had to carry me into the locker room because they thought it was too far for me to walk. They've been pretty hilarious about it."

Hellgate, ranked No. 5 in Class AA, has won four of its last five matches since falling into the consolation pool bracket at the Great Falls Invitational two weeks ago.

Mountain West milestone

A good portion of the region's top cross country talent descended on the University Golf Course last Saturday for the annual Mountain West Classic.

The event has long been a big draw, but this year's was the largest ever. In addition to heavy participation from schools across Montana in preparation for the all-class state meet on the same three-mile course Oct. 24, there were three Idaho schools - Bonners Ferry, Lakeland and Soda Springs.

This year also saw the addition of a boys' and girls' middle school race that pushed the total number of runners above 2,000.

In all, 52 complete teams ran in the boys' varsity race and 43 teams in the girls' race. But for the first time since the Mountain West merged the former Missoula County Public School Invitational in 1996, no Montana team or individual took home a first-place trophy.

By far, the headliner of the event was the Shadle Park girls' squad from Spokane, currently ranked seventh in the nation by MileSplit.us. Led by individual champion, senior Andrea Nelson, each of the Highlanders' five scoring competitors finished in the top 30. Shadle Park tallied 56 points, blazing past second-place Bozeman with 101.

Another Spokane school, Mead, won a boys' race that saw the top four teams hail from Spokane.

Reporter Nick Lockridge contributed to this story.