Basketball drives Pride on Wyoming reservation

ETHETE, Wyo.

The gym is adorned with championship banners, expectations are high, and the players gasp and burn their way through sprints during the first days of basketball practice at Wyoming Indian High School.

The afternoon is growing late and the sun casts long shadows across the snowcapped Wind River mountains. Inside the brick gym, the Chiefs - winners of the 2A state championship in March - run more drills, more sprints. Theirs is an up-tempo, run-and-gun game, and stamina is critical to their chances for a repeat.

Basketball is king on the Wind River Indian Reservation, a 3,440-square-mile expanse of mountains, valleys and rivers that’s home to the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes. The Chiefs, who have built one of Wyoming’s most successful high school basketball teams, are the pride of a community beset by poverty, alcoholism and related social ills.

Hundreds of raucous Wyoming Indian fans made the 130-mile drive to Casper to see the 155-student school take its seventh state title. At the final buzzer, the players, some of them with their hair in long ponytails, were mobbed by friends and family, young and old, seeking autographs and pictures.

The community celebrated the championship with a potluck dinner at the high school gym, said head coach Craig Ferris. They watched a video of the title game, and the players donned war bonnets and were honored with a victory dance.

“As Native Americans, we’re very, very family oriented and community oriented, and I think [basketball] is just another reason for the community to come together,” Mr. Ferris said. “Kids see the players that play now and they want to be a part of it. It gives the community something to cheer about, something to rally around.”

Mr. Ferris, 32, who won a state championship as a player with Wyoming Indian in 1995, said his first championship as a coach brought relief, along with pressure to win another one.

“That’s the thing about our fans - they’re never satisfied,” he said. “Last year we were 29-1 and we got in trouble for losing that one.”

Many of Wyoming Indian’s players come from families whose names echo in basketball lore around the reservation. Their relatives are emblazoned in the school’s 56-foot-long trophy case.

“The whole atmosphere around here - it’s basketball first,” said Caleb Her Many Horses, a senior on this year’s team. “I always wanted to be a part of a state championship and be a Chief.”

“It’s pretty much the only thing to do on the reservation - play basketball,” said Slade Spoonhunter, a 17-year-old senior and returning starter from last year’s team.

Success tends to breed interest. About 60 Wyoming Indian students, boys and girls, are playing basketball this year, more than double the participation in any other sport.

Basketball is popular across Indian Country in North America. The Native American Basketball Invitational, an annual summer tournament in Phoenix, drew 64 teams this summer and 86 in 2008, said GinaMarie Scarpa, co-founder of the tournament.

The founders started the tournament in 2003 to help connect college scouts with high-school-age American Indian players, she said.

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