Vikes return to the court
Evan Jordt takes a shot from the top of the key over a defender from Sandy High School. The Sandy team is from Oregon and was in the area to attend the Grizzly basketball camp at the University of Montana last weekend, which Bigfork also participated in. Monday evening the Vikings hosted Sandy for a game at the Bigfork High School gym. (Jordan Dawson/Bigfork Eagle)
Several members of last years Vikings basketball team, and a few upcoming freshmen, hosted an impromptu game against Sandy High School from Oregon Monday night and won 78-72.
The Oregon team was in the area to attend last weekend's high school basketball camp at the University of Montana.
"It was a great opportunity for the kids," said Paul La Mott, Bigfork High School head boys basketball coach, of the Grizzly camp. "I was surprised how good the competition was."
Bigfork and Sandy were two of more than 60 teams from across the western United States and Canada that attended the camp.
"We had a couple of games that we played really well, and we had a couple of games where we didn't play so well," La Mott said. "We're still working on figuring out everyone's roles. We need to remember that we are stronger when we play as a team than when we play as individuals."
Bigfork played against Sandy twice at the Missoula camp and lost both times. The first game they lost by 20 points during the round-robin play for seeding Saturday. Bigfork lost by 6 the next time the schools met, which was during the second round of the tournament play Sunday.
The Vikes got their revenge Monday, though, in front of a fairly large crowd for a summer evening in the Bigfork gym.
The scoring was spread out among the more than dozen players who filled La Mott's bench. Dillon Fraley had the most points, though, with 12 and Carter Sorensen kept up with 11. Ben Sandry, Ian Lorang and Colter Trent each contributed 9. Ryan Gembala added 8 points.
"It was a good lesson for the kids that if we keep working that we can improve," La Mott said.
Improving is the name of the game for the Vikings this summer. Last year La Mott had just been hired as the head coach and had not yet moved to Bigfork, so he wasn't able to work with the boys consistently.
"We have the luxury of being able to spend the summer together this year and work on the things we need to be focusing on," La Mott said. "We didn't have that last year and I think it will be a big benefit to us."
Two weekends ago the Bigfork boys traveled to Libby where they faced several teams from Northwest Montana hailing from schools of all classes.
"We played well considering that the boys weren't in basketball shape," La Mott said. "However, we played poorly in relation to where we were at the end of last season."
La Mott is hosting the usual open gyms this summer for potential players on next year's team, but he is also taking the boys to play in area tournaments and camps.
"Our mantra this year is 'the next level and the next step,'" La Mott said. "We had a successful season last year and we want to build on that so we want to continue to improve. Therefore, we want to play teams that are as good or better than us so that we're not mistaken by our own success. We are a good basketball team with good players, but there are better teams with better players. I want our boys to see that and understand that they can improve to that level."