BILLINGS — Welcome to The Huddle, a new recurrent notebook featuring the personalities and stories behind Montana high school sports. This isn't about scores or standings, it's about the people who make high school athletics meaningful across our state, from senior reflections to coaching milestones to the traditions that define programs in every corner of Montana.
We'll bring you brief features from Class C to Class AA schools, highlighting teams, athletes and coaches whose stories deserve to be told. If you know someone we should feature, let us know.
Coach’s corner: Back in the game, Colstrip boys coach Roxie Wilson ‘facing the storm’
Whenever Roxie Wilson needs a jolt of courage or support, she leans on a necklace featuring a buffalo head on one side and an Indian head on the other gifted her by one of her in-laws.
The buffalo takes a challenge head on, the saying goes. Always faces the storm. That’s what Wilson intends to do, whether it’s processing the April death of her 45-year-old son, or coaching the boys basketball team at Colstrip.
Ever since she retired from the Colstrip school district and also her position as the Fillies girls basketball coach following the 2020-21 school year, Wilson has been itching to get back into the game.
She applied for the girls job at Billings Senior a few years ago and most recently for the open boys job at Huntley Project, getting neither. Finally, earlier this month, Colstrip hired her to coach its boys program, just days before the season opener.
Wilson, who said player parents urged her to apply for the position, couldn’t be more eager to get back into the fray. Colstrip has had a rotating door of coaches, and the Colts played their first game on Dec. 9 with just seven eligible players, losing by 14 points to Forsyth. This year won’t be easy.
“These kids are seeking help, you know, they just want that consistency. They don’t want to have another coach next year,” Wilson said. “They said they want a coach that believes in them, and so I told them as long as they give me 100%, I’ll give them 100%.”
That’s the way Wilson has always been. Her demanding coaching style helped guide the Fillies to two Southern B divisional titles, two state-championship game appearances and another third-place finish at state.
Her teams might not have had the most talent, but they played hard, played unrelenting defense and made the most of what they had.
The season after she stepped down, the Fillies won the state title under the direction of then first-year coach Ben Johnson. Wilson watched her former team win it from the stands.
“They came up and grabbed me and they took pictures with me because we were family,” Wilson said. “It broke us all up when I couldn’t coach them that last year, the seniors. I didn’t think (retirement) through, pretty much.”
The family atmosphere is something Wilson aims to replicate with the boys program. With the low player numbers and them having to learn her coaching style, Wilson said she’s focusing a lot on fundamentals for the time being.
But it’s been a salve for her. Coaching helps keep her from constantly thinking about her son, who would help her feed the cows every morning on the family ranch, she said. She has a part-time job in the afternoon and then comes basketball, so her days are full.
As Wilson stood on the sidelines for that season-opener in Forsyth — familiar territory for her because she’s spent the past few years helping coach the middle school programs there — she instinctively grabbed her necklace and made sure the buffalo head was facing outward. Facing the storm.
“I wear it so that I go forward and show my strength, that I can get through this,” Wilson said. “It was kind of hard, but as soon as the game started, everything else disappeared. Just the game, the boys on the court, was all I could think of and see.”
5 Questions with: Butte junior Cadence Graham
Cadence Graham, the daughter of former Belt coach and current Montana Tech women’s coach Jeff Graham, led Class AA in 3-point shooting percentage last season, making 44 of 106 attempts (41.5%) and made nine 3-pointers in a game, setting the school record. A former top-five placer in the Elks National Hoop Shoot, she also led AA in free throw makes per game (5.70) while making 77.0% from the stripe (114-148).
The Huddle: Do you remember when you first started shooting around in a gym?
Cadence Graham: Oh, gosh, like probably kindergarten, first grade I’d say. I spent all my time in the gym. I would go to all my dad’s practices. We never really had babysitters, like, my dad’s assistant coaches would be our babysitter basically in the gym.
TH: What’s the main difference in your free-throw and 3-point shots?
CG: For my free throws, it’s kind of like pausing and taking my time before my shot. But my 3-pointers, it’s kind of become like muscle memory basically now. I really don’t think about it a lot, it just kind of comes off, you know, because I practice it so many times.
TH: To get that muscle memory, how much time do you spend on your shooting drills?
CG: It only really takes me, like, 30 minutes (a day) to get a good shooting routine in, like, honestly, 30 to 45 minutes is my max. People think that you need to be in the gym for like three hours to have a good shot, but if you just work hard for 30 to 45 minutes straight without many breaks, it’s going to be way more efficient.
TH: In terms of shooting, is there a piece of advice that’s stuck with you, be it from your dad or any other coach?
CG: Watch the ball go in. Watch that ball and hold your follow through. My dad’s biggest thing he always preaches at basketball camps is those fans in the crowd that are like, ‘chase your shot, go get that rebound’ … but, shooters shoot and they stay and they watch their shot go in.
TH: You’ve made nine 3-pointers in a game, so I’ll ask you: What is a more lasting feeling, a night like that, or a night where you’re 1 for 9 from 3-point range?
CG: Both, in a way. I remember my freshman year, I was like 0 for 18 on my shots, and I remember how, like, devastated I was because I was ‘this isn’t me.’ Those nights stick with you, and that’s what kind of motivates you sometimes. But then it’s also those nights, like, 9 for 10 or whatever, those nights are, like, ‘oh, finally, this hard work is paying off.’ I think both those moments are great lessons.
Senior spotlight: Always on the go, Circle’s Conner Guldborg forced into temporary break
For the first time in a long time, Conner Guldborg is getting some time off. He’s not happy about it, either.
“I don’t really know what to do with myself, really,” said the Circle senior shortly after having surgery on a broken right wrist immediately after the football season. “It’s boring, you know.”
Guldborg’s forced rest is antithetical to someone who is used to always being on the go. He’s been a four-sport athlete for the Wildcats — and the Glendive Blue Devils American Legion baseball team — for a long time. He logged his first varsity minutes as an eighth grader with the basketball team.
A center and nose guard on Circle’s 8-Man football team, Guldborg sustained his injury during the final regular-season game against Forsyth.
He’s a “grinder,” though, and finished out the season, continuing to snap the football with his heavily wrapped right hand.
“It didn’t feel too great,” he deadpanned.
Guldborg played throughout the Wildcats’ playoff run, which eventually ended in a 36-32 semifinal loss to Drummond-Philipsburg.
He’ll be sidelined for the basketball season into possibly February, but coach Scott Nasner and the Wildcats will eagerly await his return, even if hoops isn’t his best sport. There are other things Guldborg, who was a captain on last year’s team that won 17 games before losing out at divisionals and didn’t feature any seniors, brings to the court.
“Conner is just that rock, he’s rock solid,” Nasner said, after slapping that ‘grinder’ label on his player. “He’s always got the group in mind. He’s just so consistent with that that it makes it easy for us to coach him.”
What else could someone expect from a player who didn’t miss a baseball practice or game last summer, driving 45 miles (from Circle after school or track practice) or 60 miles (from his home in Brockway) to Glendive up to five days a week. On the way back from road games, the Glendive bus would drop Guldborg off near Terry in the dead of night with one of his parents waiting to take him the rest of the way home.
Those were long days, indeed. But then Guldborg, who hopes to play baseball in college, wouldn’t have it any other way. He could quietly relish the time off forced upon him to refresh body and spirit, but that’s not his style.
“I play hard, I go hard in everything I do,” said Guldborg, who also throws the discus and shot put at Circle and has another year of eligibility left for the Blue Devils baseball team. “I’m not the tallest, I’m not the fastest, but I play hard, and that helps me a lot.”
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