Bringing it home

Ask Cary Finberg about basketball and he'll tell you about family.

Who were his role models growing up? His late brother Craig and his sister Cathy, two star basketball players.

Who opened the door to a coaching career that spans 14 years and includes three state championships and a 107-30 record the last seven years? Craig and his late father Math.

Who is there offering support day after day, one season after another? His wife, Angie, and his two daughters, Ciera and Cydney.

Basketball and family, as Cary tells it, are connected and always have been.

On a bright school-day afternoon, Cary, 44, sits inside his blue house across the street from the high school gym and explains how everything ended up the way it is; how he grew up the youngest in a working-class family in the working-class town of Columbia Falls; how he left home before returning with uncertainty years later; how he rebuilt Columbia Falls boys basketball.

But first, the story of the surprise.

At the Class A boys state basketball tournament in Butte last March, the never-give-up Wildcats stormed through the loser-out bracket after suffering an opening round loss in double overtime to eventual champion Laurel.

Only two teams went on to end the season with a win, and Columbia Falls was one of them. The Wildcats thumped Billings Central 51-30 in the consolation game and returned home with their sixth top-three trophy in nine years.

And that wasn't all.

Last Tuesday, at the postseason team banquet at the high school, athletic director John Thompson and school supporter Bruce Adams surprised Cary with a plaque congratulating him on his 200th win.

"I didn't know about it," he says as he looks down at the gold-lettering. "They kind of surprised me with (the plaque), so it was nice. I didn't expect that. It's more for the kids."

The milestone came in that final game of the season, setting Cary's career record at 200-120. But his success isn't only measured in a win-loss record. Restoring tradition takes more than a few winning seasons.

"I think the most impressive thing about our basketball team is just how hard they play, year in and year out," Thompson says. "They play hard, especially on the defensive end of the court, and that's the reputation that I think coach Finberg has wanted the team to develop and that's the reputation that they have. They play hard."

When the Columbia Falls native took over as head coach of the boys program in 1996 as a 30-year-old with no head coaching experience, the team had barely won eight games the previous three seasons, going 8-52. They hadn't won a divisional tournament game since 1991.

In Cary's first year the team made it to state. Since then, the Wildcats have regained the spirit of the royal blue and white teams of the 60s-70s when the dominating program played in three state championships. Under Finberg, the Wildcats have won Class A state titles in 2003, 2005 and 2006. Last winter, the program had another banner season and finished 21-3 and won the Northwestern A Divisional crown for the second year in a row and fifth time in eight years.

"I was lucky enough to come back and start coaching in Columbia Falls and the one thing I wanted to do was to try to bring respectability back and to try to make Columbia Falls a tough place to play and a tough place to get a win," Finberg says. "Really, state championships and things like that were so far away from the time I took over that that wasn't really an issue. We were just trying to get back on our feet."

The tradition regained its roots and keeps growing every year.

"(Columbia Falls) is a working-man's place and that's the approach we take with the basketball team," Cary says.

It started when an unsuspecting neighbor put up a basketball hoop on Sixth Avenue East North, next to the Finberg household.

The Finberg parents, Math and Norma, were never really sports fans but their five kids - Chris, Cheryl, Craig, Cathy and Cary - all showed interests in athletics. Basketball, as fate would have it, caught the eyes of Craig and Cathy thanks in part to the neighbor's court.

"It was just kind of the neighborhood meeting spot and we'd spend hours and hours out there," Cary says. "Craig and Cathy were a huge influence for me basketball-wise because I was young enough to them where I looked up to them pretty good."

Almost nine years younger than Craig and eight younger than Cathy, Cary grew up watching his all- state siblings dominate the court and carry on to succesful college careers.

"Growing up, basketball was just kind of the way it was and watching them you just kind of expected ‘Well I guess everybody goes to play college basketball,'" Cary says.

The youngest Finberg picked up where his predecessors left off and became an all-state player in his own right. After graduating in 1984, he went to play at Montana Western in Dillon and became a Hall of Famer there.

While working on his teaching degree, Cary joined his brother Craig's coaching staff for boys basketball at the town's high school, Beaverhead County High.

Just as he had been a role model for Cary as a player, Craig became one as a coach. And what a role model to have. When Craig, or "Finny" as he went by to most, retired from coaching in 2005, he left behind a lasting tradition that included a 281-160 record and two state titles.

For two years, Cary worked alongside his brother on the bench. After graduating, the road was open and Cary wasn't sure where to turn. By this time, back home his dad had left a desk job at Plum Creek Timber Company because "he didn't like being stuck in an office, so he bought a bar so he could be out with the people," Cary says.

Math offered his son a job at the family's Columbia Bar, and Cary took the opportunity. Years later, after Math passed away Cary took over running the bar full-time.

After he returned home and started working alongside his mother and father, Cary applied for a job as a junior varsity boys basketball coach, which he got. Three years later, he stepped in as head coach.

What took place in Four Seasons Arena in Great Falls on March 14, 2009, transcended sports.

The Class A boys state basketball tournament was down to two teams. In the pregame warm-ups, it was hard to tell which was which. Every player on the court had the same name on the back of their jersey - Finny.

Columbia Falls and Dillon, two teams connected through one family, were facing off for the title just as Craig was facing down pancreatic cancer. A month earlier, news had spread that Finny was battling the deadly disease.

Before the game, as they had for the whole divisional and state tournament, the Columbia Falls players donned T-shirts that read across their chests ‘Don't Give Up ... Don't Ever Give Up!'

It became an unforgettable tribute that Saturday night. In a back and forth thriller, Dillon rallied past Columbia Falls 54-50. Just after the game concluded, a packed arena began chanting "Finny" as an emotional Columbia Falls bench looked on.

Six days later, on March 20, Craig passed away at age 51.

Cary remembers those days vividly, but words are hard to come by.

"It was definitely a surreal experience to be out there with the connection of everything going on and how it played out," Cary says. "I guess, you really won't fully appreciate it for years later. It was definitely unbelievable."

It's spring, basketball season has been over barely two months, but Cary is still at it. Open gyms are being organized at the high school for anyone interested. The gym is only a few hundred feet away, not exactly a long commute. And there's next season to think about, in between running his daughters to sporting events around town that is.

"Basketball has been a big part of our family and a big part of my life, and basketball has been very good to me," he says. "I just want to kind of give back being that it's Columbia Falls and my hometown. The kids and the community have just been great and obviously there's been great parents and great support through the years ... I've been real fortunate to have some talented players that want to put the time in and want to work and obviously want to play as a team and put the team first. Without the players that I've had, none of this success would be possible. It starts with those guys."

Cary also credits his assistant coaches - Dan Block, Greg Bauska and Skip Schroeder - who "have been a huge part of the success," he says.

Two-hundred wins later, Cary sits back in his couch in his living room, surrounded by pictures of Craig, his sisters, his family, basketball teams. When asked how much longer he plans on coaching, he answers with ease, the way someone would answer if asked how long they plan on doing something they love.

"I will coach until it's no longer fun, and when that time comes I will know," Cary says. "As long as it's fun, as long as they're willing to have me, I'm going to do it as long as possible."

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