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Basketball Memories

 

In Montana basketball is king. On Montana’s Indian reservations it is life itself. Year around you will see young boys and girls playing a game, or just shooting around.

 

Basketball has become part of the oral history tradition in Native American communities. Teams and players have become legendary on the reservation and among Indian residents in the states urban areas.

 

Basketball players like Donnie Wetzel, Randy Pretty Weasel, Clayton Good Luck, Barney Smart Enemy, Elvis Old Bull, Kayla Lambert, Mike Chavez, and most recently, A.J Long Soldier, whose untimely departure to play for “the coach upstairs” has left many in Montana

greatly saddened.

 

Some Indian basketball teams were themselves legendary. Wolf Point, Lodge Grass and Browning have won

numerous State Championships in basketball.

 

Nearly all Indians can tell you about their favorite basketball moments, favorite players

and memorable teams, some going way back in time.

 

The team that has always occupied a special place in my mind and heart is the Wolf Point team that defeated Great Falls High in the semi-final game of the 1968 State Championship tourney. And then defeated Kalispell in the Championship game.

 

This was back when large urban schools and what became class “A” schools played in one classification termed the “Big 32’. That’s how a smaller community on the Ft.Peck Indian reservation wound up playing against the “big city’ school of Great Falls High in the semi-final game that year.

 

1968 was still in the period of time before “Indian rights”. The American Indian Movement (known as A.I.M) and the civil rights movement changed all of our lives forever. At the time, I was a young teen-ager living in Twin Bridges at the Montana Children’s Center, which used to be the Montana State Orphanage. At least half of the young boys and girls living there were Native American. Most were from reservations across the state, and the rest from urban Indian communities.

Back then Native American role models and examples of achievement were virtually nonexistent for Indian youth. Racism and discrimination limited our hopes and dreams and had real impact on our self-esteem.

 

Wolf Point playing against the much bigger Great Falls High was not only” David versus Goliath “it was also “us versus them.” A chance for Indians to symbolically “beat the white guys.” Just as black people all over the country huddled around radios to listen to Joe Louis fight Max Schmeling for the heavyweight boxing championship a group of Indian boys (some from the Ft.Peck reservation) at the Children’s Center huddled around a small transistor radio and listened to the state championship game.

 

Reception was sketchy. There was static and the quality of sound wasn’t good. I remember the Weeks brothers, John and Willie ,both Native Americans, being the key players for Wolf Point, while Great Falls High had a player that was very tall, possibly 6’8”. And if memory serves me correctly, the game went into two overtime’s before Wolf Point eventually pulled off the huge up-set victory.

 

This of course, sent all the Indian kids at the Montana Children’s Center in Twin Bridges, Montana into delirium. We felt ten feet tall! Wolf Point, at that moment in time, represented all tribes, and all Indians, as well as our hopes and dreams.

 

The black people had Joe Louis;. We Indians had the Wolf Point Wolves!

 

Ever since, I have always rooted for any reservation teams that are playing at district, divisional, or state basketball tournaments.

 

 

GO INDIANS!

James Parker Shield, Publisher

James Parker Shield

FROM THE PUBLISHER . . .