From the Fringe ... I've always felt the 9C Tournament was the biggest show in town

Inside what I consider to be the best hospitality room each year, a close friend of mine walked up to me and quietly said: "You're going to miss this." The "this" he was referring to, in the moment anyway, was covering the 9C tournament and he isn't wrong.

In my humble opinion, there is nothing quite like the 9C tournament, a tournament I've covered for almost my entire time at the Havre Daily, save last year when COVID-19 put me out of commission at the worst possible time.

Yes, the 9C tournament is so special to me, and to all of us who care, for a myriad of reasons.

First, it's ours. Everybody has their thing, every community clings to something that's uniquely theirs. And for those of us on the Hi-Line, in the area, and in Havre, the 9C tourney is uniquely ours. It's a once-a-year gathering where folks from all over the area meet up in Havre for basketball, and so much more.

Certainly, one thing that makes the 9C so amazing is the fans. There's always been the running jokes about the 9C, and Class C hoops in general. Jokes like "The last one to leave Turner please shut off the lights." Or "During tournament week, the only ones left in Chester are the mailmen and the fire department."

Of course, while those jokes might not be literally true, they do highlight just how incredible the 9C fans really are. They come to Havre by the hundreds, from all eight towns they represent, and once they're inside the Havre High gymnasium, they really do create the electric atmosphere we've all come to know and love about the 9C.

And it is an incredible atmosphere. From the players on the floor, creating so many exciting games, the fans, the workers, the volunteers and anyone and everyone who is there, there's just a really special buzz about the 9C tourney, and you really do have to experience it to understand.

The 9C tournament also never disappoints me. It never lets me down. From the hundreds of games I've covered, to the thousands of players and coaches over the years, and all the changes - when I started covering the 9C, K-G, Blue Sky and J-I were still high schools, Chinook and Fort Benton were in Class B, Rocky Boy was still in the 9C and Chester was still called the Coyotes - we've seen the 9C has, and will always, live up to the hype.

And the hype is also what I've always tried to create during my time covering it. Through my stubbornness and insistence on doing the 9C up big, we've managed to darn near cover every game for 22 years. I know, some of my colleagues like Daniel Horton, Chris Peterson, Kason Clark and Colin Thompson to name a few, probably didn't like me much during 9C week, but I always felt we had so many really important stories to tell each and every February. It was like our own March Madness came to Havre, even if it was a month early.

We have so many great sporting events to cover in Havre, from the Blue Ponies to Montana State University-Northern and everything in between. But during this week, 9C week, it was always my intent to make sure this tournament, the schools, the kids and the fans, they were the biggest sporting event we covered. I always wanted to make sure this tournament, and all these great teams got their due. This was their week. That was, and is always, very important to me.

That's right, when the 9C tournament arrives in Havre each year, it's the biggest show in town. That's how I've always looked at it, that's how I've always treated it, and my friend was right, I am going to miss it when I'm not covering it anymore.