Bigfork, a city of champions

It’s not often you see an army truck filled with high school students cruising around the small, lakeside town of Bigfork.

But that’s how Bigfork High School celebrated its boys basketball team’s Class B state championship win on Wednesday.

The Vikings lifted their trophy on March 8, but spring break and all-star tournaments pushed back the parade. Bigfork’s enthusiasm for the champions wasn’t dampened, even by the rainy weather.

Players, each wearing bucket hats and gray shirts with the Bigfork logo, packed into the camouflage truck with school cheerleaders and several youth basketball players. During the route, they stopped by a group of elementary-aged children and tossed candy to them. The driver of the truck honked the horn regularly, so much that there was likely not a place in town that couldn’t hear the honks and subsequent cheers that followed.

After the parade, families and friends filed into the school’s lobby for a banquet of sorts. Coach Sam Tudor introduced each member of the team and reminisced about the season that ended in the best possible way.

“I could go on forever,” he said.

Bigfork High School is riding a wave of success after winning its second state boys basketball title in as many years and its third since 2014.

It’s pretty close to a dynasty, but it didn’t happen overnight. It has been years in the making.

“We’re a summer town, and when there’s no tourists here, a lot of what we do is go play basketball,” Tudor said. “We do a lot of summer basketball around here, and that’s probably one of the reasons you do see us being successful. We play a lot of basketball.”

Kids are enrolled in basketball programs from a young age. Little Hoopsters is a program that helps build interest in the sport and focuses on skill development. By the time they’re ready to play in school, players have a solid foundation in the sport.

Many of the seniors have been playing since elementary school. That’s nearly a decade of basketball by the time they graduate.

“A state championship’s like a combination of coaching, skill and luck,” Bigfork athletic director Matt Porrovecchio said. “You get there with this core group of kids that’s been practicing and playing and sometimes in some situations, you lose those kids. They transfer, they lose interest, they burn out. There’s countless ways that these don’t play out in the end, and I think what we saw was how everything did align.”

There’s more that goes into it than just athletics. Among some of the moving parts are teachers and advisers who make sure student athletes maintain good grades, which are checked every week.

The success isn’t just season-ending, either. The team is 46-2 over the past two seasons. In 2018, it went undefeated.

“Their win-loss record is definitely an accurate indicator of the amount of character we have on this team, or had on this team,” Tudor said. “It was a bittersweet win for sure because those are a really solid bunch of kids, seniors with a bright future.”

Bigfork racked up a couple other impressive records this year. Anders Epperly broke the all-class state record for assists. He had 215 in 2018-19 and over 800 in his career.

Tudor reached the 100-win mark the same night Epperly set the assists record. He’s 111-12 in his five-year coaching career.

In addition to two state titles under Tudor, the Vikings were runners-up at state in 2017. Tudor wasn’t part of the 2014 team that won a state title but coached under Kurt Paulson, now head coach at Carroll College, for two years.

It’s possible Tudor could be among the leaders in coaching wins in school history, but Bigfork is still in the process of compiling school athletic records, so that will take some time to figure out.

Tudor’s impact isn’t limited to the court. He maintains contact with current students and those that have graduated. Parents recognize that, too.

“I had many parents after we won state, gave me a hug and didn’t want to let me go because I was a big part of their kid’s life and their kids are now off to college,” he said. “I think [players] always feel like they’ve been a part of something special, win or lose. As far as the success portion goes, I think it’s the amount of time these boys put in to basketball.”

Besides getting an early start in basketball basics, students participate in multiple sports, which isn’t all that unique to high schools as a rule but something that’s crucial at a small school like Bigfork.

“It makes them a lot more coachable,” Tudor said. “We have a lot of football players on this basketball team, and one of our strengths was our physicality. A lot of that comes from football. We preach that at Bigfork. We think it’s important, even if it’s playing golf. I think the more adults you can interact with and take criticism, it just makes you a more coachable and well-rounded individual and player.”

Porrovecchio’s pet project of sorts has been the school’s trophy case. Or lack thereof, at least until recently. Until renovations to the school made it possible, there was no place to display trophies or plaques. Things are still being sorted through and taken out of storage, but the trophy case is filled now. Among the plaques and trophies sits a basketball scribbled with the names of each member of the team that won the state title this year.

A standout feature of the trophy case is the rectangular TV screens mounted on either side of it. The screens scroll through photos of school record holders from several decades. More will be added to the slideshow as records are rediscovered from items in storage.

“With success comes the trophies,” Porrovecchio said. “There wasn’t any place to stick them. Now we have a place to stick them so it’s just been this slow, gradual process.”

It’s the first full year for students in the upgraded school since a $14-million bond made updates possible in 2017. It’s a mix of old and new, much like the town of Bigfork itself. The exterior of the school looks brand new, and there are many things in the existing building that are original.

The gym has been renovated but retains its old-school charm, and that gym is where the magic happens.

On a cold Friday night in December, there’s no better place to be than in the Bigfork gym, cheering on athletes from the boys and girls basketball teams. People of all ages line the stands. It’s not just a game — it’s a social event. It’s a place to reconnect with former classmates, neighbors and friends or reminisce on time spent as a student there.

Porrovecchio understands this well. He was once a student at Bigfork and often goes to games even though none of his own children are involved in high school sports yet.

“You do see multiple generations of people coming into the gym to see what’s going on,” Porrovecchio said. “They just come because they love seeing kids compete, they love high school sports. Some of the people that I see that are here years and years after their kids have come through or their kids are getting ready to come through.

“They’ve had kids in the system and they have some sort of an emotional connection. They went to school here, they have kids that go to school here, so there’s a connection to this school, to this place, to this experience. There’s something about that sports thing that kind of digs deep into people’s souls.”

Bigfork’s student population is 308. According to the school administrative office, there were 176 students absent on March 8, the day of the title game. Some were out sick and the rest made the trip to Belgrade, estimated somewhere in the neighborhood of 150. That number includes school band members and cheerleaders, of course. Still, close to half of the entire high school traveled to cheer on the basketball team.

“That community environment that the kids and the teachers along with them created was a really special thing,” Tudor said. “That was not necessarily the most academic point of view, but the kids thought that what we were doing was special too and that’s a pretty cool thing as a coach to see the kids as a community come together and be something positive together, because it isn’t always positive in high school.”

This type of enthusiasm isn’t just limited to the basketball program. Porrovecchio notes that one characteristic of the Bigfork community is that it rallies around one another and the support is not contingent upon success.

“We’ve had a really good run,” Porrovecchio said.

“Which I think sometimes we can take for granted but I think its kind of generated a lot of attention and excitement. It’s a special thing to be a part of and people want to be a part of it.”