North Dakota Class B Fans

We spent the weekend at Class B Boys Basketball in Minot, North Dakota. All of my family was together. See the below picture of our some of our crew. To put this into perspective, I have heels on and am probably 6’2″ or more standing in them. Hunter looks little at 5’7″.

Photo credits to my dad. Not pictured Mama Jane and Elizabeth…back in the hotel room playing

I was raised in a family steeped in basketball players and fans.

One of our annual family rituals has been to attend the North Dakota State Class B basketball tournament–whether we have a local team to cheer for or not. As we are getting older and have more responsibilities, all of us cannot always make it but this year was different.

Our little village where my parents farm, a town of less than 300 people and only known for an annual turkey barbeque was being represented in the tournament by Gus Kueber and the team that Joe played on just last year in his senior year. Our local school from the farm was an underdog to even reach the state tournament and upset several teams to get there and did the same in the first two rounds of state. Hunter, Brother Joe and my parents went on Thursday. (Small town ND has no school during the tournaments…otherwise known as “spring break” for only two days.) Robbie, Kirsti and boyfriend Mike arrived Friday. I had work related meetings Friday and drove home in the afternoon. We had told my family IF Dakota Prairie wins in the semi-finals Friday night we would come on Saturday to the championship. We watched from home Friday night and indeed a huge win on Friday night sent Nathan, Elizabeth and me driving 200 miles northwest Saturday morning.

This picture is blurry but shows the lights turned down and excitement of the starting line up of the championship game. DP lost to an undefeated Linton team a town just 30 miles from where we live. Linton…the team that haunted Nathan his senior year in a game that no one in our area has forgotten fifteen years later. And Dakota Prairie won’t forget losing the state championship last night. But we were so proud of our Dakota Prairie boy Gus who won the MVP of the tournament. More kids need to work to achieve success in the good ol’ fashioned way that Gus did. Shooting baskets for a decade of his life. No fancy camps or traveling teams. Hard working farm kid who had keys to the local auditorium. Not the school gym. The auditorium…the small town building built as the original “civic center” of a community with an old wooden floor and an old basketball hoop in it.

Mama Jane stayed back at the hotel with Elizabeth who was asleep 45 minutes before game time. And she didn’t go to bed hungry. Mama Jane had a refrigerator full of snacks, including some yummy smoked cheese Elissa could not get enough of…even it meant gnawing at it straight from the package.
The older I get, the more I am thankful for weekends like we shared at North Dakota Class B Boys Basketball. Wins or losses, don’t matter as much as our time together.

Are you a small-town sports fan?