Badger Basketball - What a Ride!

The Badger basketball season ended this last weekend at the Four Seasons Arena in Great Falls.

We entered the Divisional tournament with our first game against the Winnett-Grass Range Rams. The Rams have been State-ranked all season and proved to be a tough test for our team. Despite being down double digits throughout the game, the boys continued to fight hard and closed the gap multiple times. With seconds on the clock, the Badgers were within 3 points and had the ball. Unfortunately, a ref's whistle didn't go our way and we lost the opportunity to see if a heroic shot could force overtime. We had many other opportunities throughout the game and needed a few more things to go our way, but I am proud of how the boys didn't give up. There were multiple situations where it would have been easy to.

Friday morning, we were back on the court in a loser out contest against the Roy-Winifred Outlaws. The early start time, and the letdown from the day before, seemed to be weighing us down throughout the game. We once again got down by double digits. The boys fought back multiple times throughout the game but poor 1st half shooting, and a rough rebounding night, doomed us in the end.

Friday morning's loss marked the end for this year's squad, but I am so proud and lucky to have spent time with this group. These boys gave us so many awesome memories, capped off by raising our first District Championship trophy in school history.

A quick thanks to everyone who supported us throughout the season. Thanks to the parents; you raised great kids! Thanks to everyone who fed us. The spaghetti dinner before tourneys was awesome, the free food night at the Driftwood, and Tracy Creveling picking up our hefty tab at Divisionals. We are lucky to have so many amazing people in our great community.

Thanks to the school, staff and students for everything from amazing facilities, volunteer workers, awesome bus drivers and loud crowd noise. Thanks to the Courier for printing our story all season. We have a ton of great memories for the scrap book. Thank you Mike, we had fun every day!

Most importantly, thanks to the kids. Our young boys worked hard all season, had great results and pushed our Varsity everyday in practice. The future is bright for our program. Our Varsity accepted every challenge and gave us their best all season long. Finally, to the Seniors: Brent, Seth, Gavin and Turkey, I love you guys. I'm going to miss every bit of it, and I know you four are going to do amazing things in the future. You left the basketball program better than you found it and have given us a higher set of expectations to live up to. Someday in the future we will win a Divisional and State trophy, and you four will have been a part of laying the foundation for that success. Finish your high school careers strong, good luck with Spring sports and GO BADGERS!