Tunnel Vision

The Browning Indians boys basketball team has made quite a run, with nine straight wins and its first Northwest A regular-season title in four years in hand.

Maurice Redhorn III is a force offensively for the Indians, who take a 14-4 record into a first-round game against Frenchtown Thursday, at the Western A Divisional in Butte. Redhorn averages 19.2 points while handling point guard duties a majority of the time. 

Right behind him is fellow senior Tommy Running Rabbit, who at 6 feet tall averages 11.9 points and a team-high 6.5 rebounds a game. One of the beauties of Class A basketball is the occasional “pocket center,” and Running Rabbit fits the mold. And that’s not all.

On Dec. 20 he signed his NCAA Letter of Intent to join the University of Montana football team, which is rare. Browning has had its share of basketball players excel in college, including a handful with the Lady Griz, but not one athlete from the school on the Blackfeet Reservation has earned a letter playing football for the Griz.

Running Rabbit figures to be the first.

“It was always a dream, being a fan of them ever since I was a little boy,” he said.  

The dream led him to the Grizzlies’ individual camps the last two summers. That first summer, he lined up at both running back and receiver. 

“It was fun,” he said. “A lot of fun. That’s how I met Coach (Bobby) Hauck, that first camp. I guess I must have impressed him.”

As happens, prospective athletes are offered tickets to watch the Griz home games. Running Rabbit, along with family and friends, made the trip down US-2 and 93 way more often than not.  “And every game,” he said, “was the loudest I’d ever gone to.”

Along the way running backs coach Justin Green made a visit to Browning High School, and Running Rabbit made his official visit to UM in January. 

It’s exciting not only for him but his teachers and coaches. Robert Miller, who coached football for 10 seasons at Browning and is the Indians head track and field coach, raves about the senior who runs the sprints and short relay.

“He’s a good dude, man. Top to bottom,” Miller, a 1990 Browning graduate, said. “You don’t get those guys very often.”

Miller remembered a Browning product named Shawn Heavy Runner that walked on at Montana. … and that’s just pretty much the list. The school is not a football power, certainly, but there are some kids who can flat-out play. 

“We’ve looked at a lot of kids from Browning over the years,” Hauck, who just completed his 12th season guiding the Grizzlies, said last week. “Coach Miller used to bring teams to our camp.

“I’m not sure where Tommy is going to play, because he played both sides of the ball. But he can run, and has a good change of direction. He’s like a lot of small-town Montana guys, where you’re not sure where he’s going to be, but he has ability and you feel like he can come in and make his way.”

First things first: The Western A Divisional basketball tournament is filled with teams with true centers, like Frenchtown’s 6-foot-7 Eli Quinn and Dillon’s 6-5 Kyler Engellant. 

Browning has size in 6-3 Delbert Blackman, 6-3 Jude Reevis and 6-4 Tristan Crawford — enough to avenge early-season losses to equally large Columbia Falls and Bigfork. Isaiah Running Rabbit — Tommy’s older brother, and a fellow senior — sets the tempo on defense..

“We’re first in our conference,” Tommy Running Rabbit said. “It was actually after our fourth loss (at Columbia Falls on Jan. 19), we were talking about it, that we have to lock in. That was it — now we’re top seed into the divisionals, which is always a good thing.”

“There’s five seniors, and they all play a part,” DJ Fish, in his first season coaching his alma mater, said. “I think coming in, new coach, a different system. … I still don’t think we’ve played our best ball.

“But as far as effort, I can’t knock that. Watching those guys grow up and play basketball, the chemistry that they have, I’ve seen that since middle school. I always knew they were a complement to each other. That chemistry is pretty strong over a lifetime of playing together.”

Fish was MVP of the 2008 State A tournament that Browning won, and originally signed to play hoops at MSU-Billings before ending up at Haskell Indian Nations in Kansas. Not much later he earned a business degree at Salish-Kootenai College and became a banker before getting into coaching at Ronan in 2020.

It was late in his high school career that college became a reality, he said, and he sees similarities in Running Rabbit.

“He’s chasing these dreams,” Fish said. “He’s had key moments in his life, he’s made the best of it and taken the bull by the horns.”

Running out of the tunnel at Washington-Grizzly Stadium is a pretty good dream. Who better suited than a player named Running Rabbit?

“It’s pretty cool that Tommy gets another opportunity,” Miller said. “He’s excited and I’m excited for him. You get one shot, and you have to give it all you’ve got.”