Ole Goat Memories: Pride: The incredible 1991 Ponies

Sometimes, I forget what I did last week. Sometimes I forget what I had for dinner two nights ago. I guess that’s just the nature of getting older and, pretty much being busy with sports 24/7.

But ask me about the Havre High basketball season of 1990-91 and it’s an entirely different matter. There is very little I don’t remember about that magical year. As the Havre Blue Ponies try to win the Ole Goat back from Great Falls High tonight — for the first time since that amazing season — I’m reminded even more about just how special that particular Blue Pony basketball team was.

In fact, for all my own accomplishments during my high school career, including a decent tennis career, that winter, my sophomore year, was probably the best three months of my entire high school existence — and I wasn’t even on the basketball team.

No, I stood just 5-feet-4 around the time of my sophomore year, and though I loved the game of basketball, I admit I just wasn’t good enough to play for the Blue Ponies back then. Maybe it was an indictment on my limited basketball skills, but I prefer to think of it as a testament to just how good we were in those days.

And, oh, how the 1990-91 team was good. So good, in fact, that the Ponies, made up of as good a senior class of basketball players as there ever was in my opinion, got to 22-0 before they ever lost a game.

I remember pretty much every one of those wins. I remember beating a CMR team led by Super Dave Dickinson and Jon Knutson in Havre, then taking a ride to Great Falls to watch the Ponies score 103 points on the Rustlers in their own gym.

On many nights that season, blowouts were the norm, whether home or away. I got to even see plenty of away games because my older brother was covering the team as a sports writer for the Havre Daily News at the time, so I had access to plenty of Havre’s away games that season.

As momentum built that season, there was nothing like a Havre High home game. The HHS gymnasium had been remodeled that summer, and with every game, capacity was going up and up. No one wanted to miss the Blue Ponies that winter.

And why should they? The collection of talent on that team was incredible. Led by the twin towers as we called them in those days, Tommy Reynolds and Bill Rice, Havre had an inside game that was rare to Class A basketball, and is seldom seen today in Montana. Because of that, there’s no doubt that there has never been a Havre team since then that has had so many thunderous dunks in one year.

But the Ponies also liked to run. That’s what Scotty Leeds, Shawn Rismon and Brian Lowe did a lot of as an incredible three-guard tandem. All of those guys could shoot it, too, and so could fellow senior Rob Watson, who could always be counted on to come off the bench and bury a quick 3-pointer.

The Ponies had incredible depth as well. The late Clay Morse was all heart and a true spark plug. And youthful players like Billy Evans, Allan Azure, Jason Wirt, Ryan Shepherd and Jeff Dow gave Havre a second-unit that just couldn’t be matched.

Of course, the team had a coach, too — Bob Lanning. He was the maestro who held it all together, and though the high-scoring, fast-paced style with yanking down the rim dunks type of play the Ponies showcased that season wasn’t the type of basketball Coach Lanning (Yes, to this very day I still call him Coach or Mr. Lanning whenever I see him), was used to coaching, he adapted to the team he had. He let the Ponies loose that season, while still implementing his belief in fundamentals, toughness and defense. And what became of Havre that year was a brand of basketball that comes along literally once in a lifetime around these parts.

And that brings me back to the things I remember most about a season I pretty much remember everything.

I’ll never forget the excitement of heading to the Central A Divisional Tournament in Bozeman that season. As good as Havre was, the Central A was as good as it gets as a conference. Havre, Livingston, Butte Central, Browning, Dillon, Lewistown and Belgrade made up the league that year, and I can’t remember a bad team in that tournament. Of course, Havre won to stay perfect on the season, and then it was off to the Butte Civic Center for the Class A state tournament.

Arriving in Butte, we, as Blue Ponies, had no doubt we were going to win it all. We were going to end the state championship drought in basketball in Havre once and for all. But, of course, that’s why they have to play the games, and what I remember so vividly is having to deal with the harsh reality that Havre’s state championship dream, my friend’s state championship dreams, our state championship dreams, weren’t meant to be.

Ironically, it was a Havre native, Andy Drier, and the Laurel Locomotives, who ended that dream on a wintery Friday night in Butte. The Locomotives played the game of their lives that night, while the Blue Ponies, for about the only 32 minutes of that entire season, just didn’t quite have it.

I’ll admit it right now, I can still see myself standing in the stands at the Butte Civic Center, crying as the Blue Ponies left the floor that night. Yes, I cried when we lost that game, and our run to a state championship ended. It hurt that much. I wanted it that bad.

However, that wasn’t the first time I cried in the stands that season, and that brings me to the Ole Goat, Great Falls High and what I remember most about the 1990-91 season.

Because of how good we were, and because of how incredibly good the Bison were that season, the Ole Goat became a hot topic literally before the season even began. It hadn’t garnered much attention before that year because, quite frankly, Havre High didn’t win it very often.

But, as we boarded pep buses to head to Great Falls for the first meeting with the Bison that season, we knew things would be different. We all knew the Ole Goat was destined to come back to Havre. And in a tight game, Havre got the road win it needed to have a chance to win the trophy back. That night, in what was then known as the Bison Fieldhouse, that was the night when we all realized just how good the Blue Ponies really were, and how special that season might turn out to be.

Fast forward to February, and the Ponies and Bison were ready to meet inside the HHS gymnasium, with the Ole Goat on the line. That’s the night I’ll always remember most from that winter, and it became, probably, the most memorable night in my four years of high school.

I couldn’t possibly have imagined the electricity inside our gym that night. I could have never envisioned that many people inside our gym – for anything – let alone a Blue Pony basketball game.

We, as students, those of us not good enough to be on the floor playing in that game, we did our part. By that point in the season, our student section rivaled those you see today at major college basketball games. We were loud, we were in sync, we had cheers, we knew the names of the opponents, we taunted them in ways you can’t do today in high school, and we, together, turned the atmosphere inside the HHS gym into one that opposing teams feared. And that night, against GFH, we blew the lid off the Pony Corral.

Right from the start, that night was emotional. The Gulf War was on, and a singing of Proud to Be an American before the National Anthem and starting lineups, that was the first time I cried that season. Yes, the emotions of American pride combined with Blue Pony pride brought me to tears right there in that gym.

The game itself was amazing, too. The Ponies and Bison went back and forth for three quarters, though it always stayed close. But as great a team as the Bison were that season, the Ole Goat was not staying in Great Falls. And as the Ponies’ lead grew late in the fourth quarter, thunderous chants of “We got the Goat” echoed throughout the gym, over and over and over. It seemed like it went on forever. I know I wished that night would have lasted forever, because, as a student at HHS, surrounded by all my friends, with so many friends in the game, and with what seemed like the entire town stuffed into that gym, I don’t know that I have ever felt so much pride in two words: Blue Ponies.

That’s the story of the 1990-91 Havre High boys basketball season — a story that can be summed up in one word for me: pride. Sure, there are plenty of key words that go along with that season, words like great, amazing, fun, twin towers, Ole Goat, Central A champions and in the end, heartbreak.

However, for three months that school year, and especially on that February night in Havre against the Bison, an incredible basketball team helped fill me with more pride than I ever thought I could feel.

It’s been 25 years since that amazing season, and 25 years since that damned Ole Goat has graced the HHS halls with its presence. It seems like a lifetime ago. But to those of us who were there for that season, and all of the greatness that was wrapped inside those three months, when you take the time to reflect on it then it seems like it was just yesterday.

While I hope that the 2015-16 Blue Ponies get the chance to know the feelings and pride that comes with winning the Ole Goat tonight in Great Falls, no matter what, that magical season of 1990-91 will be one I can’t and won’t ever forget.

Not 25 years later, not 50 years later, not ever.