Upstart Savage Storm wins at NABI
Team defeats CMD from Fort McDowell for title
The kids on the Savage Storm affectionately call her “Auntie,” but Theresa Frost isn’t technically family.
Frost and her husband, Stephen, have been sponsoring Savage Storm for seven years to attend the Native American Basketball Invitational in Arizona.
Based out of Okeechobee, Fla., Frost finds kids who have been cut from other teams around the country and cannot afford to attend NABI to compile her roster for the tournament.
She sponsors the whole team for a week (paying for food, lodging, travel, etc.) to come and compete in the biggest Native American basketball tournament in North America.
“It's heartbreaking because we had some seniors (who were cut from other teams) … and this is their last year (of eligibility), so I put them on the roster,” Frost said.
This year, the team is made up of players from Native American reservations across the country including South Dakota, Mississippi, Florida, Nebraska and Oklahoma.
Because the players on Savage Storm live thousands of miles apart, they’ve never held a practice together. They’d never spent time getting to know each other until they arrived in Phoenix ahead of their opening game.
So how does a team that has never taken the floor together make a run all the way to the championship game and win?
Their coach, Matt Foreman, keeps it simple: run.
“We just push the ball. We just get up and down and go,” he said. “No practice, we just showed up and showed out.”
It also took a last-second buzzerbeater on Friday night against Cheyenne Arapaho, this year’s defending champions, to get to the championship game. The Storm had clawed back from an early deficit to tie the game at 72 with about 40 seconds left. A missed shot was collected by guard Lucas Osceola, and he nailed a baseline jumper from about 10 feet away as time expired.
The Storm would end up defeating CMD (from Fort McDowell, Arizona) in the championship game 69-65 to capture the trophy. Playing in Talking Stick Resort Arena with a crowd clearly cheering for the home team, the Storm held off late runs from CMD to eke out the win.
Frost enlisted Foreman to coach her team three weeks ago when they ran into each other during a tournament in Oklahoma.
Foreman — who coaches his own team in Anadarko, Okla. — agreed and brought three of his players with him. His players were originally supposed to play on Cheyenne Arapaho but were left off the roster just a few weeks ago, so the semifinal victory was that much more satisfying, Foreman said.
With the help of Frost , he was able to get those players onto Savage Storm, giving them a chance to compete on the big stage.
For Foreman, the tournament has become a family affair. At 11 a.m. Saturday morning, he sat directly across from the away team’s bench to watch the Division 2 Girls championship play out.
His daughter was a part of the SW Heat-Ktysp from Okegie, Okla., and added six points in the final game to help her team win 59-28 and bring home the trophy.
It was once a family affair for Frost , as well, when she would bring her son to compete in NABI when he was a teenager.
"It's unheard of for a team with this little preparation to come this far," Frost said, her voice breaking due to the emotional attachment she feels to her players.
But she has done her part in making sure the boys do everything together, including cooling off in the pool, watching film and eating meals. She organizes all the team’s meals and takes the boys’ phones away while they eat so they will actually communicate and get to know each other.
“They’re joking like they’ve known each other forever,” Foreman said.
From Frost's perspective, the boys might not have known each other, but they are all connected by their native heritage. The team is represented by players from Cherokee, Winnebago, Apache and many other tribes. They all come from the same blood, she says, so on a spiritual level, it makes sense that they were able to bond.
The ultimate goal for the both Frost and the NABI foundation is to give the kids an exposure to the opportunities possible outside of their lives on the reservation.
The hope is that they become successful NABI alumni and return to their communities and give back to the next generation.
Former Suns forward and current NABI advisory board member A.C. Green has played a significant role in each of the 16 years the tournament has been hosted by speaking to the teams and giving advice.
As he sat courtside to watch the games on Saturday, Green was hopeful that this week’s experience would help open the eyes of some of the players participating.
“That’s my biggest goal,” Frost said. “I hope they come out here and they see life away from the poverty, experience all this, learn from it … and then take it back home and help their people.”