High school basketball games generally have a great mix of competition and fun. For Brockton High School’s girl’s basketball team, they realized before tip-off that their game versus Froid-Medicine Lake would be far from either.
Brockton coach Terrence Johnson knew his team would be outmatched against Froid-Medicine Lake but never expected the game to get this out of hand. At the final buzzer, his Warriors had lost 102-0. It was the first time in the history of Montana that any basketball team had been shutout.
Johnson has run the Brockton varsity girls team for seven years and had never encountered a loss like this. He had hoped to have nine players ready for the game, but, as the day progressed, he only got more bad news. By game time, he just had five players ready to play: an eighth grader, a freshman, and three sophomores. Naturally, all of his upperclassmen had to sit the game out for various reasons. Even worse, his upperclassmen were the team’s best ball handlers.
The Froid-Medicine Lake Redhawks already had a size advantage over the smaller Warriors. The Redhawks had three girls over six feet tall. The tallest Warrior that game only stood five-foot-seven.
Johnson said, “We knew what we were getting into. We spent two weeks getting ready for this game, but when we got down to five players, all of our plans went right out the window.”
By halftime, the Warriors trailed 59-0. To make the game finish quicker, they began using a running clock for the last two quarters, which meant the clock would not stop for things like fouls and traveling violations. Things got even worse in the second half when one of the sophomore girls twisted her ankle. With ten seconds remaining in the game, another girl injured herself, forcing the Warriors to finish the game with three players.
“My girls did everything possible to score, and we were trying to find a way to get a crooked number up there. They did nothing wrong. At the end of the day, they all went home and asked: ‘What’s for dinner, Mom?” said Johnson.