Then again, if you weren't aware that SKC has a basketball program - and it has, for more than a quarter of a century - maybe it is.
The Bison have always practiced in high school and middle school gyms on the Flathead Reservation, working around the prep teams' schedules, and play most of their games - against a mixture of junior and tribal colleges and Frontier Conference junior varsity squads - on the road.
The school is bringing in Monte, the University of Montana mascot, to run rampant. And if the games are as entertaining as they were when these two schools met on the Crow Reservation last month - the women split their two meetings, and the men's teams combined to score a whopping 432 points in two games swept by SKC - then fans ought to get their money's worth.
At two to four bucks a ticket - free for kids, plus folks over 55 - it's a sure bet.
Still, there have been more important days in the history of Bison basketball, and will be more important ones down the road.
The men are two-time defending national champions of the season-ending American Indian Higher Education Consortium Tournament, where last year SKC defeated homestanding Haskell Indian Nations University - an NAIA Division II school - 77-70 in Lawrence, Kan., to win the title.
The women's team is also a past AIHEC national champion.
May 31, 2006, was an important day, too. The college broke ground on a new health and events center that, when it's completed later this year, will give the basketball teams their own 2,700-seat home. Next season's grand opening will be a big day in the history of Bison basketball.
But the most important date potentially sits out there somewhere in the future.
Salish Kootenai College has talked about applying to join the Frontier Conference.
That's a big step for a school that had never printed up and distributed its basketball schedule, nor charged a dime to get into its home games, until this season.
Some would like to see Frontier membership sooner rather than later, admits SKC president Joe McDonald. But McDonald, who was the head men's basketball coach at what is now MSU-Northern many years ago, knows there is much more to stepping up to the NAIA level than building a gym.
“I'm not sure when we'll be at the point where we can afford scholarships and coaches' pay,” he says. “We'd like to raise the money outside our general operations budget.”
Salish Kootenai College has come a long way since its humble beginnings as a branch campus of Flathead Valley Community College that opened its doors in 1977. It enrolled 49 students in its first semester and classes were held in office space donated by the Polson School District. There were 142 students when the school broke ties with FVCC and became Salish Kootenai College in 1981.
Today, more than 1,000 students are enrolled at a 128-acre tree-shaded campus in Pablo, where many pursue bachelor's degrees in fields such as nursing and business at a school that, in its early years, offered just three two-year degrees.
Establishing an intercollegiate athletics program as the school continues to grow does make sense, McDonald says. Athletic teams provide colleges lots of exposure to, and increased interest on the part of, potential students. But there are other issues to be considered.
Salish Kootenai College's mission remains the same, and says, “The mission ... is to provide quality postsecondary education opportunities for Native Americans, locally and from throughout the United States.”
While roughly a third of the student body is non-tribal, an intercollegiate athletics program could change the type of students SKC seeks to provide with those educational opportunities.
“Do we want to be all Indian?” McDonald asks. “Would we bring in African Americans? There are lots of things to be settled before we think about joining the Frontier Conference. It's something the community and school would have to grow into.”
The school has spoken to Frontier Conference officials, who liked the idea of moving into the northwest Montana market, where it has no members. An additional member would make the Frontier an eight-team league for basketball, which makes scheduling easier.
“And I think they'd really be interested in adding a school that also offered football, since not all their members do,” McDonald says.
The SKC president isn't opposed to that, either. While some scholarships would have to be offered, a football program at the NAIA level, he says, can pay its way through increased tuition revenues from students who want to play at the college level but don't have scholarship offers.
It's why some Frontier schools have junior varsity basketball squads - it's an opportunity to lure tuition-paying students who still want to play the game in a setting more organized and structured than an intramural program would be.
While there is no football stadium, nor plans for one, the new health and events center won't be SKC's first step into athletics facilities. The school already has its own nicely designed, on-campus golf course. While it's a nine-hole executive course, the Silver Fox Golf Course would make establishment of a golf program - another Frontier Conference sport - relatively easy. And volleyball, also a sport played by several Frontier members, could also utilize the new health and events center.
“It's a real big leap, and a big financial leap also,” says SKC athletics director and women's basketball coach Juan Perez, who adds that a few years back NAIA officials told him it would take a minimum of $100,000 per sport to field teams then, and perhaps more to field competitive ones.
For a school which currently budgets a total of $60,000 to fund both its men's and women's basketball programs - the money pays for coaching salaries and travel - that's a lot of money.
“That's one reason we're taking it kind of slow,” Perez says, “building the programs, trying to get the athletes to SKC first, getting our name out there, scheduling games, building connections, following through on doing what we say we'll do, going and competing well.”
SKC could become the first tribal college in the nation to compete as high as the NAIA Division I level. Outside of AIHEC, only three tribal colleges are members of other nationally recognized associations: Haskell, which competes at the NAIA Division II level, and United Tribes Technical College of Bismarck, N.D., and Little Big Horn College, both members of the National Junior College Athletic Association who compete in Region 9 and the Mon-Dak Conference.
Salish Kootenai College is in Region 18 of the NJCAA, a vast area that covers all or part of eight Western states, and the travel involved makes membership in the junior college ranks unappealing.
“We're not really a community college any more, anyway,” says Andy Zimmer, center on the men's team and the student body president. “We've got a lot of four-year programs now.”
And the Frontier is a good geographical fit. Plus, many believe Indian student-athletes have a better chance at succeeding at a tribal college than they do at other public or private institutions. Mike Chavez and Tamara Guardipee, who come from the Blackfeet Reservation and play for the University of Montana men's and women's basketball teams, are the exceptions, not the rule.
“That'd be something, for an Indian school to play in the Frontier Conference,” says Gordon Real Bird Sr., head men's coach at Little Big Horn College. “Very few Indian kids participate (at that level), and it'd be good for Indian kids and help them fulfill their dreams.”
Real Bird even saw a plus for his program - the possibility of recruiting players who, if they do well academically and athletically, would get looked at more seriously by a four-year school.
“We could be a feeder school for them,” Real Bird says. “There are a lot of natural-born athletes on the reservations, so many great basketball players that I feel could play anyplace, but not many of them do.”
Bobbie Woodworth of Browning was talked into playing for Salish Kootenai College by her aunt, former Montana Lady Griz player Malia Kipp-Camel, who serves as Perez's assistant coach. Joe Chartraw of Neah Bay, Wash., came to SKC after playing in a tournament where former Montana Grizzly J.R. Camel - Malia's husband and brother of SKC men's coach Zach Camel - was also playing. J.R. liked Chartraw's play, and told Chartraw he ought to check out the Pablo school.
It's not that SKC doesn't recruit players, but it doesn't get any more formal than that.
“I field a lot of phone calls from kids who want to know more about the basketball team, but that's about it,” Zach Camel says. “I don't contact players. Most kids hear about us through word of mouth.”
Perez and Zach Camel hold tryouts in the fall open to any SKC student. Because the teams play most of their games on the road - prior to the annual SKC tournament March 1-3, the women will have played 16 of their 23 games away from home and the men 17 of their 23 - rosters are limited to the number of players a van can hold.
The team he puts together after tryouts couldn't compete in the Frontier Conference, Zach Camel says, but only “because physically, we're not strong enough to battle them. We've never lost because the other team had better players. Physical strength is what we lack. But we've got as good of shooters as anyone.”
There was a time the tryouts didn't occur until after the first of the year - the basketball programs originally existed to get players ready for the national AIHEC tournament in March. But scheduling more games against a wider variety of opponents has been one of the many small steps - like printing up schedules and charging admission this season - that keep the programs moving toward bigger and better things.
Zach Camel would like to see Frontier Conference membership in the next two to three years.
“Salish Kootenai College has really grown, and it's ready to take the next step,” he says. “Being part of the Frontier Conference can help the school do that.”
Perez says it will take a minimum of five years.
“The biggest thing is finding the funding,” Perez says. “If the low-end cost of having a team is $100,000, well, you can make $100,000 go a long ways academically. We need to find ways to be creative and raise the money.”
McDonald says it will probably take longer than five years.
But in ways big (the new events center) and small (a printed schedule), Salish Kootenai College continues to move in that direction.
Monday's games in Ronan against Little Big Horn College are just part of the process - but, the best part.
There is basketball to be played.
Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at (406) 319-2117 or at vdevlin@missoulian.com
Game time
Home games are rare for the Salish Kootenai College men's and women's basketball teams, and the Bison are making the most of Monday night's contests at the Ronan Events Center against Little Big Horn College. Monte, the University of Montana mascot, will be on hand to ignite the crowd, and teams that like to get up and down the court at a fast clip should keep them entertained from there. The women play at 5 p.m. and the men at 7. Tickets are $4; $2 for children ages 11-17, and SKC staff and faculty; and free for SKC students, and those 10 and under, or 55 and older.
While neither Monte nor the women will be in action, the two men's teams also have a game Sunday at the Ronan Events Center. It starts at 6 p.m.
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