Listen to the entire interview with Garrett Venters
Fire has always been a part of Garrett Venters' life.
Keeping the inner fire alive drove him as an athlete, including his four seasons as a University of Montana linebacker when he was known as Dr. Doom.
Putting fire out drives him now as a Missoula city fireman where, rather than causing doom, he's trying to prevent it.
Venters' decision to come to UM was as unexpected as his later decision to become a fireman.
The Richland, Wash. product had his sights set much higher as a high school senior playing in the 3-A level Big Nine Conference in the fall of 1989. He was applying to schools like Nebraska, Penn State, Oklahoma and Miami.
"Then Montana came around, 'cause those guys weren't coming around, and coaches Kraig Paulson and Bruce Read came to recruit me," Venters recalled.
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He knew nothing about the Grizzlies back then and had never set foot in Montana before.
"I didn't even know the Grizzlies existed, to tell you the truth," Venters said. "But once I got here, it just felt like home . . . because it was so personable. The coaches were great under Don Read's staff, and the players were great.
"I just felt so right."
Richland, Kennewick and Pasco are three communities that form the Tri-Cities of Washington, and the close physical relationship of the cities makes for interesting rivalries.
"Kennewick was our enemy," Venters said. "We couldn't stand them. Pasco wasn't so much. They weren't the powerhouse like they are now."
Because there was no college football in the area - Columbia Basin College had shut down its football program by then - attendance at local high school games was huge, sometimes reaching 14,000 fans.
"That was unbelievable to come from a program like that to a program like this (at UM)," Venters said.
The only UM connection Venters can remember from his high school days was the legendary Tri-Cities coach Ed Troxel, whose son, Van, played quarterback for the Grizzlies and went on to coach at Missoula Hellgate High School.
Venters redshirted as a true freshman during the 1990 season and played for four seasons after that. Even though the Don Read era was four years old at Montana Venters and his teammates felt like they were still in on the ground floor of something that was becoming special.
Venters' recruiting class, which he thinks numbered 22, included the likes of receiver Scott Gurnsey, linebackers Dan Downs and Kurt Schilling, quarterback Bert Wilberger and future pro offensive lineman Scott Gragg.
Venters and his fellow linebackers were told they could see action as true freshmen, which made them wonder of the Grizzlies were any good.
"We thought we would just be the dummy bags for practice, and it turned out we were," Venters laughed.
The 1990 season started what ended up being a 7-4 slate with a 22-15 win at Oregon State. Venters and his teammates would play three seasons before UM finally made it back to the Division I-AA playoffs in 1993.
The arrival
of quarterback Dave Dickenson in 1992 gave the program a tremendous
boost.
"When he showed up in that Oregon Ducks game in the second half, the guys on defense knew we had something special," Venters recalled. "We just knew we were going to win a lot of games, and we expected - in '94 - to win the national championship."
Turns out they didn't.
After squeaking by Northern Iowa (23-20) and McNeese State (30-28) in the first two rounds, the Grizzlies faced Youngstown State without Dickenson, who was still feeling the after effects of a serious ankle injury sustained at Boise State during the regular season.
The Grizzlies lost to the Penguins, 28-9, and were especially disappointed because a win would have put them against Boise State in the finals.
Venters marvels at where the Grizzly football program is today, but worries when talk surfaces about moving up to the Football Bowl Subdivision, formerly known as I-A.
"I don't want to see us move up," he said bluntly.
Venters said he and his teammates didn't worry too much about the offense getting the vast majority of the attention during their days at UM. In fact, they kind of appreciated it.
"It was kind of fun being under all the hype," Venters said recently, "because there were a couple of games when we (the defense) really did play like crap.
"We just went out there and had a good time," he explained. "There was no pressure, and the crowd always responded when we had a goal-line stand or a great hit. It was just fun."
Among many highlights, Venters singled out an overtime win at Idaho at the end of the 1991 season as his favorite game. Defensive lineman Chuck Mason of Bigfork blocked an extra point try in overtime, giving UM a 35-34 victory and the runner-up spot in the Big Sky Conference.
"We couldn't stand the Vandals," Venters noted, "so that was a fun game to win."
Venters majored in business communications with an eye toward getting into management. At that time he knew nothing about being a fireman, and after graduating he landed a job as production manager for a large laundry facility in Portland.
Venters and his wife, Carolyn, lived across the Columbia River in Vancouver, Wash. He realized he didn't want to work in the laundry business for the rest of his life, and coincidentally applied to be a volunteer fireman in nearby Battleground, Wash., at the urging of an engineer Venters worked with in Portland who had done volunteer firefighting in Battleground himself.
After his first night at the fire station, the 26-year-old Venters said he came home and told his wife he was going to be a fireman, and would give himself four years to achieve that goal.
After a year and a half of testing he landed the job in Missoula, the place he had fallen in love with during college and that he and Carolyn thought would be a great place to raise a family and watch football.
Because of his athletic background and how fit he looked, it didn't take Missoula firefighters long to recruit Venters for their Firefighter Combat Challenge team. The grueling competition features stair climbing in full gear in a battle against the clock.
Venters and his teammates won the world championship in 2001, and he retired from the team after that.
Two fellow firemen who had been doing the challenge for about eight years pulled Venters in during his probationary year with the Missoula department in 1999. He thought it would be "a piece of cake."
The world record time back then was one minutes, 28 seconds. On his first try, Venters posted a 2:04, "and about died."
In 2000 the three-man team placed third in the nation in Las Vegas. A year later they beat all comers, and Venters dropped off the team after the achievement.
As for being a fireman, Venters said "the job itself is just fantastic" and he loves fighting fire.
"It's aggressive," he explained. "It's exciting. It is dangerous. You're on the edge of your seat the whole time, and it's a lot like playing football. It's a lot like being on a team. I love that part of it."
Sept. 11, 2001 and the World Trade Center tragedy brought a lot of attention to firefighters around the nation. Venters recalls being one of the fortunate three from the Missoula union chosen by lot to go to Ground Zero in 2002.
"We did a walk-around ceremony around Madison Square Garden," Venters said. "There was over 80,000 firemen there. And that was the coolest thing I've ever been involved with in firefighting.
"People were hanging out of there windows cheering us on, and it was just great."
Seeing how big Ground Zero is and knowing that more than 300 firefighters died there struck a heavy chord with Venters. And being in New York and getting to hang out with firemen at old, traditional departments there made him even prouder to be one of them.
Venters recently has had another life change.
He's gotten into coaching, working with linebackers at Florence High School in the town where he and his family live.
New head coach Terry Maki, a former Libby High and Air Force standout now retired from the military, asked him to work with the Falcons defense.
It's become just another passion for Venters.
"The kids are so responsive to us," Venters said. "They're all ears, and they just want to play so hard. It's been great to get back into the great game of football."
Venters is a hands-on - or perhaps body-on - coach, and that's led to his players labeling him as "a psychopath." He insists he's not that bad, but says he enjoys mixing it up with them.
"It's harder than I thought just to get them to do the easiest things, the basics," Venters admitted, adding that he's plenty tired when he gets home from practice.
Venters still looks like he could play college football, and said he stays in shape because that's the only way he can do his firefighting job properly.
"If I go to a fire, and you are down in a room, I've got to get you out," Venters explained. "If I'm not in good shape, then I'm either going to harm myself by trying to get you out or you're not going to get out, and I'm going to leave you."
Garrett and Carolyn were high school sweethearts who carried on a long-distance romance when he was at UM and she was at Washington State. They got married right out of college.
Two years later the first of their three sons, now 11-year-old Chance, was born. Their other sons are Caden, 9, and Grady, 6.
Although Venters doesn't get to as many Grizzly football games since the family moved from Missoula to Florence, he does stay in touch with Paulson and equipment manager Steve Hackney "quite a bit."
He's also very appreciative of how receptive current head coach Bobby Hauck and his staff have been to helping high school coaches out.
What Venters hopes is that he can successfully pass the lessons he learned about life from coaches like Paulson, Read, Tommy Lee and Mick Dennehy along to the young players he's coaching now.
His message got a recent boost when Paulson took the opportunity to give Florence players a pep talk.
"It was wonderful because he said the exact same stuff that we (the Florence coaches) have been preaching and I have been telling the kids on our defense," Venters said.
