BOOKMONGER
Beyond the court
Journalist pens book about
Montana’s champion
underdog basketball team
“Brothers on Three” contains the typ-
ical elements of a sports-themed coming-
of-age story: underdog high school athletes
who, despite adversity, win the basketball
championship.
But if you’re expecting a conventional
narrative arc to this nonfi ction story, you’re in
for a surprise. The championship game hap-
pens on page 43 of this 300-plus-page book.
And author Abe Streep wasn’t even there to
witness it.
Streep is a sports and nature writer who
grew up in New York, but has spent the last
several years roving around America’s west-
ern interior, sniffi ng out stories and writing
for the likes of Harper’s Bazaar and The New
Yorker.
At the time of the Arlee Warriors’ 2016-
2017 state championship season, Streep was
living in Montana. After seeing an article
in the Missoula newspaper about one of the
juniors on the winning team, a kid who had
amassed some amazing statistics and who
lived on the Flathead Reservation, Streep
decided to pitch his own version of the story
to The New York Times Magazine.
“I knew nothing,” Streep confesses now,
but his editor back in New York didn’t know
that. He got the assignment.
It was only after he began interviewing
people that he began to comprehend the mag-
nitude of the story he was uncovering.
The little town of Arlee is located within
the reservation of of the Confederated Salish
and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation.
Most of the kids on the Arlee High basketball
team had Native American ancestry, as did
their coach. But due to blood quantum rules,
not all were enrolled members of the tribes .
This aff ected access to certain privileges
— everything from property ownership on
reservation land to tuition-fee waivers at
Montana’s public universities. But the reality
was that whether enrolled or not, the team-
mates were identifi ed by their Native Amer-
ican roots, and even their coach called the
team’s hard-charging style of play, “rez ball.”
Once Streep completed his article, he rec-
ognized there was more story to be told. He
stuck around Arlee for another two years,
viewing fi lms of the games he’d missed that
fi rst championship year and getting to know
the present-day basketball team along with
their families, coaches, school administrators
and the competition.
The Arlee Warriors made it to the state
fi nals for an exceptional three years in a row.
At the same time, on a reservation that had
been beset with the tragedy of suicide clus-
ters, the team became as widely known for
their successful suicide prevention campaign
as for their roundball prowess.
Yet for all the excellence those young men
displayed on the court, and for all the work
they invested in their academics and their
community, Streep points out that Montana’s
top colleges did not come calling.
“Brothers on Three” is a complex weave of
sports, cultural practices, generational trauma
and embedded injustice. It’s ambitious in
scope and sometimes uneven in execution.
But long after you put the book down, the
stories of those young athletes will be seared
into your memory.
The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMi-
chael, who writes this weekly column focus-
ing on the books, authors and publishers of
the Pacifi c Northwest. Contact her at bar-
baralmcm@gmail.com
This week’s book
‘Brothers on Three’ by Abe Streep
Celadon Books — 336 pp — hardback
$23.49; kindle $14.99
‘Brothers on Three’ is about a
basketball team in Montana’s
Flathead Reservation.
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