MISSOULA — Over the past weekend, the West won its sixth straight meeting over the East in Montana's annual Shrine football game.
Featured on the West team was a pair of Missoula products who are continuing the pipeline to Montana State, as Kade Robinson and Adam Guajardo are set to begin their careers with the defending FCS national champions.
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For Robinson, a Sentinel High School product, he'll be following in family footsteps of his uncle, Cory Robinson, who played for the Bobcats, while going opposite of his father, Casey Robinson, who suited up for the Grizzlies.
"It's exciting over there because they develop players very well and they take players from high school and just make them really good players like the Sentinel players, like I'm hopping on the Sentinel pipeline and all those Sentinel players started out just the same as me and now look at them," Robinson said.
"And then when I started the recruiting process, I didn't even know they were going to win a championship. Then when they won the championship, it just made it even better."
Robinson will play tight end, a position that requires him to develop and do just a little bit of everything on offense.
"You kind of have to accommodate to everything you have to do," Robinson said. "You have to know how to block, block big guys, block small guys. You have to run routes on small guys, run through backers on routes. I mean, you have to do everything. You have to work on everything. There's a lot of work that goes into it to be a tight end."
Guajardo, a product of Big Sky High School, signed to play defensive end at Montana State, and by doing so, won himself a little bit of an extra prize on top of it.
"Me and my buddy in middle school, we kind of made a bet," Guajardo recalled. "Whoever can go the highest (in football) gets like $20. So I think right now I won that bet."
Interest for Guajardo broke out as he starred on Big Sky's defense this year, and MSU showed him plenty of love which drew him to the Bobcats.
"And then that's where recruiting kind of kicked off," Guajardo said. "And then later in the season, just talking to them back and forth, went on an unofficial visit. Then went on an official visit right after our Billings West game. They were like the first team to really show a lot of effort. So I was like, I just want to go with them."
With the Shrine Game in the books, it's full-steam ahead to Montana State, as the two get set to begin the uphill climb of acclimating to college football.
"I'm going to get my weight up for sure," Guajardo said. "But they were talking about special teams for freshman year. So just hopefully make an impact on that."
"Get acclimated into Montana State, get running the plays, learn the formations and just like start special teams and start building my way up in the tight end position," Robinson added.
