CUSTER — Braden Feisthamel couldn’t have written a script much better than this to finish his high school football career.

Feisthamel was named offensive MVP and teammate and best friend Ryder Rice was the defensive MVP as the Blue team defeated the Red team 42-40 in the annual Six-Man All-Star Game on Saturday night at Hoffman Field.

Teammates at Savage High School, Feisthamel and Rice each scored two touchdowns for the Blue team, which needed a touchdown in the final minutes to win a game it led nearly the entire way.

“It feels great to go out on a win with my best friend and the friends I made here on the field this week,” Feisthamel said. “Ryder and I have been best friends since I moved here (in fourth grade). We get each other jacked for the games, yelling at each other and getting pumped up for the games.”

The two seemed to feed off each other one final time, especially when their team needed it most.

Feisthamel scored a touchdown on the final play of the first half, a fourth-down play with no time left on the clock. The 1-yard run gave the Blue team a 22-16 halftime lead.

A 6-foot-1, 190-pound running back, Feisthamel gave the Blue team a 28-16 lead early in the second half with an impressive 24-yard run weaving his way through the defense.

Feisthamel, who is headed to Montana Tech to play college football, later showed he also can run with power. He finished with 10 carries for 117 yards and also caught three passes for 28 yards.

In the final minute, needing one first down to ice the game, Feisthamel ran over the defense for runs of 8 and 10 yards and sealed the win.

“He is a horse, a workhorse,” Rice said of his teammate and best friend. “There’s no one-man tackle on that kid. Even in practice, it’s head to head every day and he doesn’t go down.”

Rice earned defensive MVP honors for the Blue team by limiting the Red team's run game. At 6-foot-4 and 205 pounds, Rice was a force on the line of scrimmage and pressured the quarterback the few times the Red team decided to throw the ball.

Rice finished with one sack and scored twice. His 2-yard run late in the third quarter gave Blue a 36-24 lead. He also caught a 3-yard pass for the first touchdown.

“Both from the same town, both of us getting that honor with the best of the best is pretty special,” said Rice, who will play at Rocky Mountain College in Billings. “We had so many great guys on our team, even if they knew me and Feisthamel could be the go-to guys, they still had to guess.”

Savage fell in the state semifinals of 6-Man football in the fall, losing 59-37 to state champion Geraldine-Highwood.

Interestingly, the Red team was coached by Geraldine-Highwood co-coach Brandon Gondeiro and had seven players in the game.

“They (Feisthamel and Rice) played very well,” said Blue team coach Troy Walters, the coach at Westby-Grenora. “They’re both great leaders and are going on to play college football. They’re going to good careers in college.”

Quarterback Darren Malek of Geraldine-Highwood was named the Red team’s offensive MVP. Nate Gray of Hot Springs was defensive MVP.

Tate Rhoads of Custer-Hysham caught the winning touchdown for the Blue team, a 2-yarder from Terry's Kyle Lassle with 3:43 remaining.

CUSTER — It’s the fast pace, the high scores, the wide-open brand of the game that makes 6-Man football so exciting. It's what also provides the image problems the game faces as it tries to draw an audience and a true following.

The 19th annual 6-Man All-Star Game is set for 7 p.m. Saturday at Hoffman Field, every bit a showcase of the 6-Man game as it is a showcase for the athletes playing it.

Montana is one of only five states with sanctioned high school 6-Man football, a staple in Texas and still played in Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico.

It allows smaller schools to have football teams. Many are co-operative programs in rural communities. The enrollment cutoff in Montana is 65 students. That leaves 36 programs across the state that competed last fall.

“It feels like a track meet in a game,” said Lane Foster, of Hot Springs, one of 40 players from the state competing in Saturday night’s game. “You’ll see a lot of big plays, a lot of great plays. We play in the open field with a lot of speed. I think it really brings out how good a player is out there on the field.”

That may be the case, but the game fights misconceptions from those who haven’t seen it.

Of course, 11-man football is the preferred way to watch and play the sport. It’s what colleges play and what fans watch Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays in the fall with the NFL.

However, in addition to the five states playing 6-Man football, another 16 play 8-Man and three more play 9-Man.

“I haven’t met someone who’s watched a game, whatever they thought of it, who said, ‘Wow. That was boring. That was a waste of time,' " said Brandon Gondeiro, the coach at state-champion Geraldine-Highwood and coach of the Red team Saturday night.

“The perception might be that it’s not your standard football, that it’s basketball on grass,” he added. “In reality, it’s quite different than that.”

The rules are different than 11-man, starting with the field. The standard game is played on a 100-yard-long field that measures 53 1/3 yards wide. In 6-Man, those dimensions shrink to 80 by 40.

With only six players, everyone is eligible to receive a pass. That includes the center. The quarterback can’t run beyond the line of scrimmage unless the ball is pitched back to him. Extra points run or thrown are worth one point. Those kicked are worth two. And field goals, a rarity, are worth four points.

“Our formations are the same, tight or spread,” said Brad Hoffman, an assistant coach for the Blue team and head coach at Custer-Hysham. “We run I-formations. We have power runs, pull guards. We run routes any team would run. It’s just like you see anywhere. There’s just five less guys out there.”

That’s the reason for the high scores, the fast pace and the wide-open game. Once a receiver or ball carrier breaks free, there simply are fewer defenders to make a tackle.

The 6-Man game, Hoffman said, emphasizes speed over size. Defenses are better, he said, despite allowing more points. Players are better tacklers. They have to be one-on-one. Even so, Hoffman knows not everyone can recognize such fundamentals.

“People think it’s playground football, that it’s a helter-skelter game,” he said. “My biggest thing is to come out and see it. Don’t judge it until you’ve seen it.”

For those who play, it’s pretty much all they know. Jake Malek, who played for Gondeiro at Geraldine-Highwood, knew from the time he first started playing football that it would be 6-Man in high school.

“I grew up ready for that game,” he said. “This is what you do.”

Malek will play college football at Montana Western, making the transition to the 11-man game. Foster will do the same, competing in the fall at Montana State Northern.

For now, however, the two are excited about their final chance to play in a 6-Man game and showcase their talents and the game to anyone who cares to take a look.

“Football is football, but it’s a blast out there playing this game,” Malek said. “It’s great to get out there and run around. It’ll be fast and it’ll be fun.”