Havre athletes bring home the gold at Big Sky Games

While the summer Olympics are in full swing, sports fans should not forget Montana's own Big Sky games that took place in Billings July 16-18. After missing last year, the best athletes in Montana and some surrounding states gathered to compete. At these games, several local young athletes took home medals for their efforts. The seven- and eighth-grade girls basketball team, the Havre Ballers, had a great weekend as they went 5-0 and took home the gold medal.

"The girls played really good. Played really hard," head coach Richard Jarvis said. "They went down and they competed as a team, they played really well together and they stepped up and won the championship."

All of the Havre Ballers were eighth graders and the team consisted of Amaya Jarvis, Ariana Gary, Chiara Littleshield, Denvyr Tuss, Ela Harber, Kiera Galbavy, Kieva Mapes, Rilee Mares and Sierra Parker. While most of the girls were from Havre, Richard Jenkins recruited some of them from other towns to fill out the roster as Mares and Mapes are from Great Falls and Tuss came from Malta to give the Ballers some depth.

In the gold medal game, the Havre Ballers defeated the Bowman Breeze.

Bringing home the gold medal was sweet for Richard Jarvis as he has been coaching the core of this team for several years. Since they are all eighth graders, now, they will all be moving on to high school but he knows their next coach will have plenty to work with.

"The next person taking over these girls, I think, should be happy and excited that they will catch a good group of girls that know basketball," Richard Jarvis said. "I'm really proud of those girls. They work really hard and they play really well together."

Along with the basketball team, Kyana Jarvis and Emilee Chambliss participated in the Big Sky games in track events. Jarvis took home the gold medal in the 110-meter hurdles with a time of 17.68 seconds. Chambliss earned a bronze medal in the discus with a distance of 97-00. Richard Jarvis himself took all the athletes down to Billings with the goal of winning medals, so to see his team, as well as his daughter Kyanna Jarvis, achieve success was sweet.

"We wanted to have fun and bring back some medals," Richard Jarvis said. "Their ultimate goal was to get down there and win gold at state games, so they accomplished their goal and as a coach, I couldn't be more proud of them because of it."