Blessed be the b-ball that binds

I've been away for a couple of days.

On Sunday evening I left Bozeman and drove to Great Falls for a conference sponsored by Montana Association of Churches entitled "New to Montana." I met other pastors and church workers who were "new to Montana" like myself.

As part of our time together, we watched a documentary produced by MT Public Television entitled "Class C: The Only Game in Town." The film tells the story of eight high school basketball teams that compete for the class c championship. All these teams are made up of high school girls who attend high schools with an enrollment under 100 students.

The teams come from small towns scattered all over the state. In many cases, the towns are shrinking. Prosperity has left many of them high and dry, with people packing up and leaving in search for fortune and security.

Girls' basketball is the glue that holds many of these small towns together. People are fiercely proud of their teams, whether they be "Pirates, Coyotes, or Spartans."

The film has stirred my soul. I've been thinking about the "roots" that hold these small towns together - even in the face of harsh economics.

I learned to admire the rancher and his wife near Reedsport who work long hours on a small spread in order for their girls to play ball. Rich abstentee landlords are buying up the pasture around them, and they don't know how long their ranch will survive.

I grimaced as I saw a third generation grocer in Scobey acknowledge that the family business will probably not pass down to his daughter because it's hard to make ends meet. Having worked in the grocery business many years ago, I know that the profit margains are razor thin.

Yet Class C basketball holds up the morale of these families and the communities they live in. You have to admire the spunk and the tenacity of teenaged girls who travel many miles from home in order to play another opponent just as eager and just as desperate to win.

I have been able to, over the course of a lifetime, to pick and choose where I live and work. For many of these families, they do not have that option.

I bet the families of Reedsport, Scobey, Chester, and other small towns in Montana feel rooted because they had to stay and make the best of it, whether it be in times of boom or bust.

If you come from a small town, did living and working there help you feel "rooted?"