Sky’s the limit for Fletcher

“It took some getting used to,’’ Fletcher said yesterday, choosing his words as politely as he could. “The people are very straightforward with what they want, and to the point. Even driving — driving was crazy. I hate when people honk at me and everybody was honking at me.’’

Fletcher had never before been away from home. He was raised in Bozeman, a small but growing college town of 27,000 in the Gallatin Valley of southwestern Montana, surrounded by mountains. Fletcher’s parents owned a 100-acre farm just outside of town, as well as the Cannery, a bar and liquor store, and Burger Bob’s, a hamburger joint, in Bozeman.

When he wasn’t playing sports — hockey, football, and baseball — Fletcher was pitching hay on the farm, or slinging burgers downtown, or, for one memorable summer, working as a “hottie’’ — shoveling hot cement.

An ambitious athlete, Fletcher stayed home to go to Montana State on a partial football scholarship. The scholarship was partial, because Fletcher was, first of all, a rink rat. He played goal for the Bozeman Ice Dogs Junior A hockey team, and he was pushing himself hard to make it to the next level, to a high-powered college program and then the pros, before he decided the pressure to perform was ruining his game, and his life.

“I had really high expectations for myself,’’ said Fletcher. “My senior year, I put too much pressure on myself and tried to do too much. I’d wake up a 5 o’clock in the morning and head to the rink and then I’d be at the rink until 11:30 and then I’d go to school until 3:30 and then I’d come back to the rink and I was at the rink from 4:30 till probably about 11 o’clock at night. I got any kind of ice time I could because I just loved it. But eventually I just got burned out.’’

Football, that was just fun. The 6-foot-2-inch, 245-pounder had scarcely gotten in a game as a junior at Bozeman High, but as a senior, he built up an impressive pile of tackles and earned All-State honors. He had an outstanding career as a defensive end for the Montana State Bobcats — team captain, unanimous first-team conference all-star as a senior, as well as conference defensive MVP with 67 tackles and seven sacks, but this was the Big Sky Conference, where the sky is big but the football is less visible.