This uplifting, inspirational, underdog Cinderella sports team story begins in the most unlikely place imaginable for such a story to begin: with the underdog Cinderella team having already won the state championship. The all-Native American basketball team of the Arlee Warriors from the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana brought the championship home to the reservation in March, 2017. They had done the impossible; the thing about which spirited films are made. Cinderella had not just gone to the big dance, but she brought home the crown and kicked Prince Charming to the curb in doing so.
In other words, this is not really a Cinderella story in the traditional sense. In terms of Montana basketball, by the middle of March, 2017 the Arlee Warriors were no longer Cinderella and they weren’t even the Prince. They were the King. The champions. There is nowhere else to go but down from that level.
Or, at least, that is the impression we are often left with after reading or watching these kinds of stories. Author Abe Streep tells a story that is almost—perhaps actually is—unknown in the great big trough of Cinderella stories about teams that should never have won the Big Game, but did. It is a true life tale that answers the question we're not supposed to ask: what happened next year?
This is the story about the 2017-2018 basketball seasonfor the Arlee Warriors who find themselves tasked with transforming from the undergo into the powerhouse that another underdog team is given no chance to beat. Still, it is a basketball story and naturally enough the focus is on the road to the repeat. As a result, the narrative offers plenty of exciting ups and down and highs and lows that milk all the drama out of a long and grueling season that is inherently there to be milked. A basketball team is comprised of multiple players, obviously, but on any championship team there is usually just one or two stars shining the brightest who depend on the others as a supporting cast. And so it is with the Warriors. The most intense focus is on the two players who are not just the stars of the team and are not just returning for their senior years, they also happen to be cousins: Will Mesteth and Phillip Malatere. (Actually, the fact that the two stars of the team are cousins is really not big of a deal since almost everyone on the reservation is related to everybody else at some point in the family line. Such is the nature of the beast of reservation living.)
Their teammates will each get their individual moments in the sun as those moments arrive, but the intensity of the book’s focus on Will and Phil reflects that of the school and the entire community. Questions are raised: will the pressure of just trying to repeat as champions be too much for the cousins to bear? And what about the emotional impact upon two legitimate superstars on the court who must face the historical reality that despite the plethora of athletic talent that simple statistics would indicate has grown up on the various Native American reservations, the only famous “Indian athlete” in America history died sixty-five years before the Warriors brought that championship trophy home? (His name is Jim Thorpe.) Are Will and Phil destined to become just two more talented athletes overlooked in the otherwise wide-open world of college scholarships or would winning back-to-back championships finally be enough for white colleges to take notice? These subplots would make a strong enough narrative on their own, but along the way that story becomes about something more than just a round orange ball and paid tuition.
Montana as a whole has become the suicide capital of the country and within that capital the most likely to take their own lives just so happen to be members of the various indigenous tribes living on reservations. As the basketball season wears on, more players and coaches are directly impacted by what the head coach terms an epidemic of self-destruction. Inevitably, the question becomes what is more likely to stimulate interest, attention, or action about a social problem in America than a successful athletic team? The answer, of course, is almost nothing.
Long before the Big Game in which the Cinderella team and the defending champion are actually—somehow—one and the same, the already uplifting story takes a left turn to become even more inspirational as the entire team unites and commits to raising awareness and demanding action on the gross injustice infecting the reservations, tribes and entire state under the umbrella organization known as the Warrior Movement. And then, just as unexpectedly, as the story of the drive to repeat as champions becomes inextricably linked with the Warrior Movement to raise awareness about suicide prevention, the subplot suddenly takes another left turn as the unchallenged good intentions of Warrior Movement falls under the dark shadow of suspicions of corruption and allegations of bullying. With all this still weighing heavily on their shoulders, the story drives like a fleet-footed point guard toward the ultimate goal: the excitement of a return trip to the championship game. Except, of course, this time the Arlee Warriors are no longer the underdog.
Will the team fall apart under the strain? Is the message of the book that Cinderella stories really are just fairy tales that only happen because a lot of luck collided with just enough talent? Or is the real point of the story that sports is great and all, but it’s just one tiny portion of the vast story of life and death always going on outside the arena no matter who wins or loses?
