This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2006, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
MONTEZUMA CREEK - The Whitehorse Raiders are in uniform and growing antsy. Their first state tournament game is 12 minutes away, and in their locker room in Richfield, the teenage girls can't hide their excitement. They have survived a hellacious season, somehow managing to stay together despite conflicts and controversies, all manner of hardship. They have reached the postseason again, and it's clear many of the players believe their fortunes will change now that the pressure of reaching the tournament has lifted.
Everyone is ready to play, but one ritual remains. A team captain produces from her locker a small plastic bag containing a mysterious powder, which resembles ground pepper. One by one, each girl reaches in and pinches a tiny wisp of the herb between her fingers, then quickly flicks it into her mouth.
Properly invoked, Navajo spirits are now protecting the Raiders. The team huddles up, shouts "family!" in unison, and races out to the floor.
They are the same as every other team in this field, just a group of typically distracted schoolgirls, steeled by a long season and dreaming of a championship finish. And yet the Raiders are unmistakably different, too. They are the "Indian team," their brown skin impossible to miss amid the state tournament's otherwise entirely white makeup. To many in the stands, they are a novelty, and while incidents of bigotry at Whitehorse games are rare, the team's coach, Marrietta Hatathle, isn't naive enough to believe they don't exist.
During a tournament in St. George a couple of years ago, a referee granted a timeout to "the brown team." Trouble was, the Raiders were wearing white. The official was reprimanded, and tournament organizers apologized to Whitehorse, but Hatathle hasn't forgotten the incident.
Still, the contrast works in the Raiders' favor in this setting. The crowd for the first-round game with Meridian High is small, but decidedly pro-Whitehorse, as usually happens on a neutral court. The obscure Class 1-A school from a map dot called Montezuma Creek, next to a barren desert butte, which most Utahns will never pass within 50 miles of, is forever perceived as an underdog, fighting odds as long as the bus ride it took to get here.
In many ways, the perception is accurate. The population that sends its children to Whitehorse has the state's highest poverty and unemployment rates, twice as many cases per capita of aggravated assault as the rest of the state, and the lowest household income. Many live as far as 30 miles from the school, so only two-thirds of the high school's students ever graduate. Only 4 percent obtain college degrees. Montezuma Creek has virtually no businesses, and few prospects for one anytime soon. The street�lights that line the high school's exterior weren't erected until almost 20 years after they were approved.
But all that means little to these kids right now. They just want to play basketball. And as they prove right away in their tournament opener, they're pretty good at it, too.
Juxtaposition of cultures
Last season's state finalists know little about their faraway opponent, beyond its worrisome 15-6 record. Hatathle, her emotions worn nearly threadbare by a season of bickering and strife, tells her team simply to "have fun."
They do. Ten of the 14 Raiders score, and the Raiders rout Meridian, 51-25. Derica Dickson, who just a week earlier had to be talked out of quitting the team, leads Whitehorse with 17 points, a decent performance considering the pressure she is putting on herself. For the school's lone all-state player, more than just a basketball championship is at stake here. A couple of dynamic performances, she hopes, might impress college scouts at the tournament enough to offer her a scholarship. It's just about the only hope she has of carving out a life for herself away from the isolation of the Navajo reservation.
Of course, not every player longs to assimilate into mainstream America. Vanessa Whitehorse, for instance, wants to attend architecture school in California, but then return to Montezuma Creek to help her fellow Navajos.
"The houses aren't good quality," says Whitehorse, granddaughter of the man who donated the land the high school sits on, of the tumbledown, roof- or door-less shacks that dot the landscape. "I know we can build good buildings cheaper, with better quality."
The players straddle two different cultures, trying to balance their ambitions in the modern world with respect for the ancient one. They live in a world of iPods and laptops, like teens all across America. But legends passed on by long-gone generations, like seeking protection through the herb, still reverberate with Whitehorse students, too. The school's 220 or so students are all American Indian, and many are careful to defend their ancient culture against attacks from corrupting influences.
Most of the Raiders, for example, speak Navajo, though when chattering with each other, they nearly always choose English. Signs in the high school's hallways and classrooms are written in both languages, and courses are offered in the traditional tongue. "My grandpa told me, 'The end of the world is when you lose your language,' '' says Shawnarae Lee, one of the seniors on the team. "We see it slipping away."
The juxtaposition of the clashing cultures is everywhere. It's in Lee's bedroom, where she proudly displays a traditional ceremonial dress made by her aunt, an elder in the tribe. She plans to wear the garment to graduation in June, even though the black and red fabric will be stifling. Until then, it hangs in a closet between a poster of Usher and a pendant with John Stockton's picture.
Some families believe in Navajo traditions, and construct hogans, traditional dirt lodgings used for ceremonial purposes, on their property.
"We should know what our ancestors did," says Alex Lee, cousin and teammate to Shawnarae. "But we are losing our culture. It's sad. In the future, it will be dead."
Finally, it ends
The optimism roused by Whitehorse's strong tournament debut has been doused by a matchup with Panguitch - the rival that one year earlier ended the Raiders' memorable run one game from an unlikely state championship. Whitehorse lost the rematch early in the season, and that memory seems to be affecting the girls, who play with noticeably less confidence.
Whitehorse has some easy chances to score baskets early, but fails. The missed opportunities cost them, and the defending champions lead 33-18 at the half.
"What are we here for?" Hatathle huffs during the break. "I'm embarrassed. I want 16 minutes of Raider ball. The fans are counting on us. Play as a family!"
The Raiders break by echoing her, shouting "family," but there is no rejuvenation. Only four Raiders manage to score - Dickson contributes a sub-par nine � and Panguitch wins 54-29.
There is some disappointment, but little surprise. And Dickson manages to view the loss optimistically. "At least we got by as a team," she says. "No one got mad at each other, like we did the last time we played them."
Because the tournament is double elimination, the Raiders are still alive, but a day later they face Monticello, which swept a pair from Whitehorse during the season. It becomes apparent quickly that the Raiders are ready for their season to end. The smothering press and aggressive pace that carried them so far a year ago are absent, and Whitehorse falls behind by 16 points at halftime.
Hatathle can take no more. For several years, she had devoted her professional life to pursuing this job, and now it all has come crashing down upon her. She spent the season cajoling disgruntled players, fending off whiny parents, wrestling with the whims of her teenage charges.
She is exhausted and depressed. And now, sensing her players don't care anymore, she is done.
Hatathle bursts into the locker room, unable to suppress her rage and disappointment. "You've given up on me," she barks. "Well, it's all up to you." She spins and charges out of the room, barely able to suppress her tears.
The players sit stunned. Then Delbert Dickson, Hatathle's assistant coach and father of the team's best player, shocks them by raising his voice for the first time all season. "What are you going to do?" he demands of them. "What do you want?"
"I'm not ready to go home yet," speaks up Shawna Mitchell; several teammates grunt their agreement.
"Then play like Raiders," Dickson says, shouting now.
The Raiders improve in the second half, but emotion isn't enough. With Hatathle sitting stone-faced and immobile, Monticello eliminates Whitehorse and ends the Raiders' season.
Derica Dickson is pulled from the game with four minutes left and watches her high-school career end from the bench.
Everyone is quiet at the buzzer, almost in disbelief. "What feels so bad is we let each other down," Dickson says. "We made a lot of mistakes."
An unknown future
The silence that weighs like gravity in Montezuma Creek is pierced by a sharp bell announcing lunchtime. Inside Whitehorse High, the school's several dozen students shuffle into the cafeteria, pick up a tray, head to the usual seats with the usual food at the usual pace.
Derica Dickson plops down among her teammates. She hasn't heard from any college recruiters yet, but if the tension and disappointment are eating at her, she disguises it well. Dickson has been named to the all-state team, and her father has plans to get her noticed in Navajo Nation summer leagues, in hopes of interesting a small college.
A few tables away, Whitehorse's faculty members eat their lunch, same as the students. But one face is missing - has been for a couple of months now. Once one of the most prominent faculty members in the school, Hatathle is now the Whitehorse Garbo, as though swallowed up by the wreck of a season.
Down the hallway, she sits alone at her desk, silently eating a sandwich in the empty classroom. Hatathle informed the school's principal shortly after the Raiders were eliminated at state that she couldn't take another season as the girls' basketball coach. When word got around, the awkwardness over her failure became too uncomfortable to bear. She couldn't mix with the other teachers, couldn't face those players. She couldn't hang on to her dream of coaching girls' basketball any longer.
Taking charge of an American Indian team was supposed to make her a success. She had pictured herself receiving so much - respect, prestige, jubilation - from the visible post. Instead, the job cost her all those things, and much more. Her ambition shattered. Her confidence melted. Relationships with colleagues and students were damaged.
She even lost a friend. When Hatathle's promotion was announced, her close friend Sharon Jay, Whitehorse's volleyball coach who had also applied for the basketball position, growled with bitterness at the decision. Jay refused to speak to Hatathle, who could have used an ally as her team underachieved. The frostiness never thawed. Jay finally left the school for another job, without a word to her one-time pal.
The experience left scars, but that doesn't make her unusual in Montezuma Creek. Like so many here before, Hatathle has become just another statistic, just another absence. She's not the only one.
Across the highway, one of the few wage-paying employers in the tiny town has shut down. The sewing factory's military contracts have run out, and its owners have been unable to find new customers. The 30 women who once kept its sewing machines whirring by making camouflage uniforms are back among the reservation's unemployed.
It's hard to tell whether anyone laments the loss. But just about everyone has noticed the change.
The humming has stopped. Montezuma Creek is silent again.
About this series: The Salt Lake Tribune spent more than three months with the Whitehorse High Raiders, and what we found was a tale of hope and longing playing out in an unlikely place, the basketball court, on an isolated sweep of Utah's Navajo Nation.