View from the Sidelines

The 2020-2021 high school basketball season in Montana was unlike any before in the Big Sky Country. With social distancing and limited crowd sizes, many games this COVID-19 addled season were played in front of largely empty gyms, with little or no fan support, sometimes for either team.

Such was the case for Montana prep teams right on through the tournaments these last few weeks. As an example, the combined State B tournaments were played in the cavernous Metra Park last week in front of mostly nobody; thank goodness for the NFHS network, which has allowed fans to still watch their teams' games

Coach Jake Mickelson and his inspiring band of Blue Hawk boys navigated the strange land of tournament basketball during a pandemic quite successfully, winning the school's highest place in a State basketball tournament since way back in 1953, but Mickelson knew what was missing.

And he and his boys did miss it – the big crowds, the rabid fans from all over Montana, and the chance to watch it all. Which is usually a big part of the whole state-tournament experience.

"That is my only gripe with it, the only downfall of a great tournament run," he said. "It was strange playing in a mostly empty gym in the state tournament.

"We didn't get to experience the excitement of a big crowd like there normally would have been at the Metra," he said. "And we didn't get the chance to watch the other games and interact with other teams like normal either."

Mickelson said the Hawks did get to know the champion Lodge Grass Indians better as the two teams were staying in the same hotel, and were able to socialize a certain amount.

But it is too bad they didn't get to know the Indians even better by earning a spot in the championship game against them, like they very nearly did anyway.

"It was a great experience, I wouldn't want to change it much," he said and then added. "But you can excuse a coach for being greedy, we like to think we can win every game."

Throwback...

Sixty-eight years ago this week, fans of the Thompson Falls Blue Hawk boys basketball team, which had just won second place in the 1953 State C tournament in Conrad, gathered at the mouth of Thompson River to greet their hoop heroes and bring them on home in style.

"When the boys reached Thompson River at about 5 o'clock there was a delegation waiting to escort them in," the Sanders County Independent Ledger, as it was called then, reported. "Surprise was registered when they found out the whole town was out to greet them.

"The procession started at the Big Pine Court. Scouts carried a 'Welcome Home Blue Hawks' banner. They were followed by representatives from Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Lions Club, Fire Department, Police Department and other organizations."

To get this far, coach Steve Previs' Hawks had defeated rival Plains 62-38 in the District No. 13 tournament championship game in Thompson Falls that season and went on to lose to Twin Bridges 70-55 in the Western C tourney title game in Hot Springs two weeks after that.

Surviving a challenge from Charlo for second place and a berth into the state tournament, the Hawks blasted the Vikings 81-49 to punch their tickets to the big show in Conrad. Bruce Hoy led the Hawks to that big win with 20 points, LeRoy Wilkes scored 20, Jim Graham 16 and David Haase 14.

At the State C tournament in Conrad, the Blue Hawks stunned the 1951 State C champion Poplar Indians 58-55 in the first round, and knocked off Dutton 51-44 in the semifinals to land in the State C championship game against the Belfry Bats, and the Bats claimed the title with a 52-46 win over the determined Hawks.

Still living in Thompson Falls, where he served as mayor for nine years and with the city fire department for two decades, Haase remembers the '53 season fondly. Viewed as huge underdogs by the press, Haase said the Missoulian sports editor of the time wrote that the Hawks would not last very long in the tourney at Conrad.

"We kept winning though," Haase said, "and our superintendent at the time, Paul T. O'Hare made a point of calling him each morning and telling him: 'Thompson Falls is still in it!'"

Haase said that the underdog Blue Hawks became more and more of a crowd favorite as the tourney wore on. "I remember we would get a big ovation when we got up to get dressed for our games," he said. "It seemed like the crowd really got behind us."

Haase said that a rowdy crowd was a factor in the semifinal game with Poplar. The Indians reportedly went into a stall in the second quarter, and the crowd would have none of that avoidance tactic.

"Everyone started booing, throwing their Coke cups on the court, somebody even turned the lights out for a while," he said. "The whole crowd got mad at them."

Perhaps sparked on by the raucous crowd, the Hawks managed to win that game in spite of Poplar's stalling tactics.

Another thing Haase remembers from the 1953 State C tournament run he and his teammates went on was seeing, and playing with glass backboards for the first time. The biggest difference he noted was the sound, or the lack thereof, off the glass backboards."

"The ball used to really clang on the iron backboards we were used to playing on," he said. "It was strange not having that sound."

Haase recalls Belfry having a really big center that the Hawks had trouble defending in the championship game. "I had to guard him and ended up fouling out in the last few minutes," he said. "We played them close but that big guy was probably the difference in the game."

Haase also remembers a man from Belfry who visited the Hawks at their hotel each day of the tournament as he too had become a fan of the underdog Thompson Falls team.

"He came in and visited with us each day and was rooting for us until the championship," Haase said. "But he came in that day and said he had to dessert us or they wouldn't let him live in Belfry anymore.'

As different as the times were, a parallel can be drawn between the 1953 and 2021 Hawks. Both were teams that got better the more they played together, and both were underdogs gaining new fans on the biggest available stage of high school hoops during state tournaments, both then and now.

They were both not-to-be-denied bands of basketball playing brothers, who played to the very last whistle of their seasons.

In addition to Haase, Hoy, Wilkes and Jim Graham, Harold Johnson, Russell Watson, Jerry Ross, David Pirker, Ormand Thomas, Jerry Luke and Richard Graham were the players for the '53 Blue Hawks, and Previs the legendary coach, who went on to become nicknamed as the "Silver Fox" for his uncanny ability to get the most out of his Thompson Falls players through the years.

In tribute to his long, outstanding career coaching hoops at Thompson Falls, the football field at TFHS was renamed as Previs Field in the early 1970s in his honor.