View from the sidelines

The west is definitely not the best when it comes to girls Class C basketball.

In the only state tournament to be played in Montana last week, the Class C girls met up at Four Seasons Arena in Great Falls and the Box Elder Bears eventually repeated their 2017 championship, defeating Northern C champions Roy-Winifred, whom the Bears had lost to the week before in the divisional championship game, 48-42 in the title game.

Charlo and Arlee, the first and second place teams from the District 14C and Western C divisional tournaments, both went two and out in Great Falls. Charlo lost to Savage 42-25 Thursday and to Ekalaka 58-41 Friday, while the Arlee Scarlets fell to Scobey 65-40 Thursday and to Wibaux 64-59 Friday.

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For the Box Elder Bears, the crying ended up being tears of joy.

Box Elder coach Joel Rosette said he liked to talk about the end of the season with his girls often during the season, reminding them that either way, win or lose that last game, that there would be tears – either in bitter disappointment should they lose or in unbridled happiness should they win.

Fortunately for Rosette and his determined team of Bears, happiness ended up trumping unhappiness as Box Elder held off rival Roy-Winifred to win the championship Saturday night in Great Falls.

"We always talk about crying on the last day of the season – either tears of joy or tears of pain," Rosette was quoted as saying. "I have tears of joy tonight."

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After last week's relatively quiet basketball weekend, most of the rest of the state prep basketball tournaments will be played this week at various venues across Montana.

Separated by one day, the State B boys and girls tournaments will be played at the Belgrade Event Center in Belgrade, with the boys tipping off Wednesday and wrapping up Friday, while the girls will begin Thursday and complete that tournament Saturday night.

Defending State B champion Bigfork and Missoula Loyola will represent the Western B boys in Belgrade and the Florence Falcons and Missoula Loyola Sacred Heart Breakers will carry the flag for the Western B girls.

Playing a week after the Class C girls who finished up last week in Great Falls, the State C boys tournament will be held at Metra Park in Billings Thursday through Saturday. The two-time defending State C champion Arlee Warriors and the reigning Western C champion Manhattan Christian Eagles are the two Western C teams who will be playing in Billings.

The combined girls and boys State A and State AA tournaments will be played at Great Falls and Butte this week as well, respectively, marking the official end of the prep hoops seasons in Montana for the 2018-2019 campaign.

On another note, for those of you who did not hear about this earlier, the Montana High School Association officially moved Thompson Falls down to 8-Man football during the annual MHSA board meeting in Billings several weeks ago.

In another move that will affect teams in Sanders County, Arlee is being moved back up to Class B after many years of competing in District 14C. Arlee teams will now be assigned to District 6B and Mission will be moved over to District 7B.

In other business from the January meeting, the board announced that football alignment will be based on specific enrollment figures: 1-65 for 6-Man; 65-130 for 8-Man; and 130-plus for 11-man. For schools like Thompson Falls petitioning to play at a lower level enrollment cannot exceed 140 for dropping down to 8-man or 70 or more for those dropping down to 6-Man, unless the petitioning school can demonstrate, like Thompson Falls was able to do, that its roster size is near to or below the average of its current classification and that success may come easier at a lower level.

It is not known at the time of this printing if Arlee will play 8-Man or 11-man football this coming fall.

There has been a lot of discussion lately about high school sports in Montana and, from this vantage point, the state of fair play in the Big Sky Country seems to be in a bit of disrepair.

The issues facing prep sports are varied and, in some cases, disturbing. If it isn't the lack of officials to call games, it is the bad behavior of parents and/or fans that has drawn attention away from the actually playing of games. Sometimes these two issues become intertwined.

Although I tend to ignore crowd noise, I sometimes cannot help but hear some of the comments from the stands. And a lot of these comments are alarming to me as a sportswriter, and I would hope to you as a fan.

The second-guessers are the ones that bother me most. If there is not something wrong with the way the game is being refereed, there is something wrong with the way the coach is managing it, and some people simply cannot seem to stay silent and feel compelled to loudly complain.

I am often surprised by the folks making these out of bounds comments because I would have never thought them capable of being so negative.

And if the officiating and/or coaching is so bad, why don't the people that spend so much time complaining actually do something about it by becoming officials themselves, or by offering to help coach? By walking a mile in their shoes, maybe folks could gain a better understanding of how difficult of a job officiating or coaching actually is.

High school sports are nearing a crossroads, an intersection where there may not be enough people willing to endure the abuse from fans and parents, both for officials and coaches. The limited amount of qualified officials has already caused the cancellation or rescheduling of games in some towns and cities across Montana, and that trend is likely to continue, for precisely the reasons we are discussing here.

The folks that coach and officiate are the ones that make these games possible, and they do so mostly out of love for the games and the athletes, not for the money. There aren't many coaches or referees getting rich doing these high-pressure jobs, especially in rural Montana, so why not cut them some well-deserved slack?

After all, who will be left to guide our kids or call our games when the people that do these thankless jobs finally decide it is not worth it to subject yourself to the kind of abuse being described here?