Box Elder holds assembly for Bears

The community of Box Elder and surrounding areas gathered at Box Elder Public School Wednesday to celebrate the success of the school's boys basketball team.

Matt Topsky, a Box Elder graduate and former basketball player, sang a Chief Rocky Boy's honor song, to the boys.

"What these athletes did ... ," Topsky said after his song, "Not a lot of athletes can do."

Topsky played the drum and sang as four dancers performed to honor the Box Elder Bears.

"It's been truly an honor and a privilege working with these kids," Assistant Coach Dustin White said.

He spoke of the team trying to believe in themselves after the last school year's season and how, as time passed, they believed more.

"By the end of the year, there was no doubt ... ," White said. "We said at the beginning we'd be a family, and now we are a family. We've been a family for three years."

Head coach Jeremy MacDonald praised the boys for their hard work and conduct.

"Not only did they get this community behind them, they got a lot of communities behind them," MacDonald said.

MacDonald said he told the team before they got off the bus on their return from the Class C state championships in Butte he wanted a photo of the team members 20 years from now. He said he wants to see a group of boys who did something with their lives.

MacDonald told the story of coming home from divisionals last year with nothing but a commemorative basketball. He said the team was feeling down from their loss, but they were determined to come back a better and stronger team. They wrote "unfinished business" across the basketball.

Many people have a stereotype of Native American teams being all "run-and-gun," but the Bears proved that incorrect, MacDonald said.

"These guys got compliments on their sportsmanship all over Montana ... ," MacDonald said. "They made people respect Native Americans."

MacDonald said after they came home from the state championships and dropped the seniors off from the bus, he turned to the underclassmen who would comprise much of the Box Elder Bears basketball team next season and said:

"The only thing harder than winning the state title is defending it."