‘We never give up on a kid’
Jason Olson and Sam Prairie Chicken mentor the Screaming EaglesBy James Giago Davies
Native Sun News Today Correspondent
nativesunnews.today RAPID CITY— Sam Prairie Chicken and the Screaming Eagles…sounds like a great name for an alternative rock band. But this being South Dakota, and Lakota country at that, Sam is a basketball coach, and the Screaming Eagles are the North Rapid Lakota boys he coaches. Most of the Screaming Eagles are Eighth Graders from North Middle School, and next year, they will be freshman at Rapid City Central High School. This is a critical transition period in every aspect of their lives, but especially pertaining to the thing these boys love most— basketball. On the Screaming Eagles every boy is brown, every boy comes from a similar situation, and there is a signature energy that radiates from each individual, the telltale sign of the Urban Lakota: a free but wary spirit, guarded yet gregarious, both tenacious and fragile, solemn but always quick with a wisecrack, because there is only one thing more elemental to each boy than the basketballs they dribble and shoot, their collective sense of Lakota humor. Legendary Cobbler basketball coach, Dave Strain, always talks about “the North Rapid pipeline,” about how his wife Betty suggested they live in the neighborhood where most of the boys who needed their support and mentorship lived. Strain became a part of the North Rapid community, and he connected with the Lakota ballplayer, understood his life and his issues, and understood coaching such players would require far more than X’s and O’s, and inflexibly demanding individual responsibility from each player. Although each child is ultimately responsible for himself, that responsibility is something built up inside him, by his parents, his family, his neighborhood, his mentors. Any child, even these boys, can be born into a preferred circumstance, with great parents, earning a good living, intimately involved in forming the character of their children, and providing them with every opportunity to succeed. In fact, the Screaming Eagles successfully compete against such boys all the time, but the Screaming Eagles do not come from that preferred circumstance. Always there is another reality, that beckons from hardship shadows, harsh and menacing, and this shadow is connected to each boy’s feet, like Peter Pan had to sew on his wayward shadow, to keep it from mischief. Sam Prairie Chicken must coach the boy and the shadow, meld them into a single resilient identity, process them through a prism of love and patience, tempered by stability and discipline. That is the calling, the mission, the challenge, and it must be its own reward, because no man makes a living doing it, and shame on any man that finds a scheme where he can. Like his charges, the main tool in Sam’s life-skills bag is humor. Although he was born and raised in Rapid City, his parents are Larry and Marilyn Prairie Chicken, and the Prairie Chicken clan originally hails from Allen. Like lots of urban Lakota, Sam has lost his rez accent, although he says it can still come out once in a while: “The accent isn’t there, but the humor is all there, Native humor. It’s really self-deprecating in a way. ‘Are you really laughing about that?’ Yeah, we’re making fun of that.” Many people contributed to making the Screaming Eagles a going concern, among them Sam’s dad, Larry. Sam was on the very first Screaming Eagle team, twenty-five years ago, as a Sixth Grader, and his coach at that time was Jason Olson, presently an assistant coach for the Rapid City Stevens Raider basketball team: “The main person behind (Screaming Eagles), running it, organizing it, was Mr. Olson. I remember he sent kids home with candy bars to sell, and I’m not sure how much money he got back, but he put a lot of time and effort into ensuring that we we got to play.” Jason will obviously always be “Mr. Olson” to Sam, because Jason formed a mentor based bond with Sam, a trust, an unspoken understanding each shared with the other, about North Rapid, about the kids, about the game, and that you never give up on each other, never write off any kid because of his failings, never abandon any kid, even to a tragic fate. “Mr. Olson created those bonds with a lot of kids,” Sam said. “He is someone you can count on, you can go to.” Jason is still connected to the program. He organizes the tournaments, sets the schedules. But there are only so many hours in the day, and there came a time when his commitment to basketball and kids kept him from being home for his own family. “We have a rule,” Jason said. “We never give up on a kid. We may suspend a kid, but we never kick a kid off the team, I don’t care what you do. My mom put me on a north-side soccer team when I was 11 years old. She wanted me to know what it was like to know kids from everywhere. I was a west-side kid. Within one week the whole team was over at my house having team parties.”
NATIVE SUN NEWS TODAY
Support Native media!
Read the rest of the story on Native Sun News Today: ‘We never give up on a kid’
Join the Conversation
