Vikings right ship in Bigfork

To hear the story now, of how the Bigfork boys basketball program went from rags to riches faster than Cinderella, it almost sounds like a tall tale.

It starts on the first night of tryouts early this winter. The Vikings-to-be took the old hardwood court at Bigfork High, scarred with a 9-48 record from the past three seasons and nary a returning starter, let alone a player with significant varsity experience. Even though the team was now technically playing in a more evenly-matched classification, Class B, the spirits were at rock bottom and its goals were six-feet-under.

Then, in walks a 6-foot-6 man who had played and coached in Australia for years. He tells them that they can achieve success and they can beat those Class A schools that muscled them around all those years. And it will all start with a novel approach.

“That first week we didn’t even touch a ball,” said Lael Richmond, one of two seniors along with Keenan Evans on the team. “At that point I was like this isn’t very fun."

“It was amazing that we didn’t touch a ball ... it was just all conditioning and fundamentals,” said Evans, who had the most varsity minutes coming into the season having logged a few each game on last year’s 3-16 team. “We’d pull out the bleachers and just run. But I knew (coach) had a soft spot. He does.”

First-year head coach Paul La Mott demands attention, mostly because of his daunting height, and he did that first night of what became a storybook season.

“We were coming into a situation where the mentality was so low, the morale was so low and we just said this isn’t going to be a situation where you pat them on the back and do counseling sessions,” La Mott said. “It’s time to get in line and start fulfilling your potential. Because what I saw was a bunch of good athletes and good basketball players who had no idea how to be great. So that was what we were going to do, come heck or high water.”

So they ran, and ran and ran; the bleachers in the gym never had so much use. They eventually picked up a ball and put all that running into a fast-paced offense, but for the most part, defense was the word of the day, every day.

“We just trusted coach La Mott that he knew what he was talking about and that all of our coaches did,” Richmond said. “We trusted that they were going to do everything they could to get us to the next level.”

And in no time at all, they got to that next level.

Heading into today’s District 7B tournament in Libby, the Vikes are the real Cinderella story and stand as one of top teams not just in this corner of the state but across the whole landscape.

Bigfork finished the regular season 10-0 in conference and 15-3 overall while filling the Bigfork gymnasium to standing room only throughout the season. The team was ranked second in a highly competitive year of Class B in the Associated Press poll in the latter part of the season until the Vikes dropped two games last weekend, against Whitefish and Ronan, and fell to fifth-place.

Forgive the group if it’s still getting used to having the bull’s-eye on its back.

“The losses definitely hurt but I think we are back on track,” La Mott said in an e-mail Wednesday night.

“I can tell the boys’ attitudes towards hard work is back where it needs to be, so we’ll see if we can get right back into it on Friday.”

Bigfork earned a first-round bye and will play the winner of Thursday’s opening matchup between Eureka (3-15) and St. Ignatius (3-15) on Friday.

LA MOTT played at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks before continuing his career professionally in Australia. After his playing days, he stayed Down Under and took up coaching kids who, he said, didn’t have the skill level of most American kids who have grown up with a basketball in hand. Instead, the Australian teams had to win with defense.

La Mott has family in the valley and visited off and on over the years which is how he heard about the coaching position. He remembers watching the Bigfork boys scrimmage before the season and seeing what needed to be changed from the start.

“They had no pride in it,” he said of their defense. “They didn’t have defensive stances. They were really just floundering.”

So he went from there and began changing the mentality of Bigfork basketball.

“It didn’t take long for me to come to the conclusion that we could do something very special here if we could get the kids to buy off on what we were doing,” La Mott said. “It’s really more a testament to them than anything else, that they chose to do that. They desperately wanted success and they had no guarantee that they were going to get it but they were willing to put in all the hard work on the off-chance that they would in fact be successful.”

Also, La Mott and others had one more request, but this time for the booster club. They asked for new gear, which provided the new-and-improved team a new-and-improved image.

“That may not seem like much to most programs ... but little things like that make them understand that this is a program, these are teams and we are one unit and we are going towards a common goal,” La Mott said. “It’s not a group of individuals trying to fill up the stat book. We’re here to win games. And now that they’ve seen the types of results we’ve had, it’s not such a hard sell.”

Reporter Dillon Tabish can be reached at 758-4463 or by e-mail at dtabish@dailyinterlake.com