BUTTE — The past three years have seen Butte Central product Dougie Peoples enjoy some huge achievements on the basketball court.
He hit an unforgettable walk-off 3-pointer to ice the 2022 Class A state championship and was soon after tabbed the Montana Gatorade player of the year.
The 2023 graduate then opted to join the College of Idaho's men's basketball team and, after coming up short in the 2024 national semifinals, the Yotes rolled through Oklahoma Wesleyan University 93-64 in the championship last March with sophomore Peoples knocking down five 3-pointers in the rout.
It was C of I's second national title in three years.
"It was really cool to go down there and achieve that," said Peoples, who was in Butte on Wednesday running his Little Dribblers youth basketball camp. "The past few years have been great. I've had some really high highs, so that's been fun."
Watch the video and hear from Dougie Peoples here:
He conceded that it was a tough decision to depart his hometown and that his freshman year was a big adjustment. But he believed in the vision of Yotes head coach Colby Blaine — who played for Steve Keller at Montana Western — and wanted to join a program where the expectation was to win national titles.
"Leaving Butte was so hard because everyone has been so good to me," said Peoples. "The Butte community is amazing."
But he wanted to chase a national title and joined the defending national champions with the goal of helping them earn another.
"Going to C of I, that's kind of what the plan was, that's kind of why I made the choice to go there," he said. "And that's what me and coach Blaine talked about, was winning a national championship."
He also got to win the national title as one of four Montanans on the Yotes' roster — Missoula Sentinel's Alex Germer, Scobey's Caden Handran and Great Falls' Drew Wyman are the others.
"A lot of times I'd get homesick and they understood the Montana dynamic," said Peoples. "I was really lucky to have them and it was just cool to do it with the Montana guys."
A lot of people invested in Peoples, and he's returning the favor this summer as he runs his kids camp — which has about 80 participants spread across multiple sessions — for the third straight year.
"I hope that these kids are excited to come up here and have fun," he said. "I've never seen as much passion as these kids have."
