My friend Chuck and I went to the state Class B Boys Basketball Tournament at the Civic Center last Saturday. It's hard to think there can be any North Dakota event, save perhaps Minot's Norsk Hostfest and the annual State Fair, that creates such pure enthusiasm and draws such large crowds. The state B basketball tournament seems to me to be the quintessential North Dakota experience. Strange: You walk into a crowded, cavernous and somewhat sterile arena in the state capital to find the sense of small-town community that has been North Dakota's most important heritage.

Having no children in the tournament and uncertain that there would even be seats for us at the evening finals, we chose to attend the tournament on Saturday afternoon, when Shiloh Christian (of Bismarck) played Barnes County North for seventh place, and Four Winds played the Hankinson Pirates for fifth place.

I bought the tickets. Chuck bought hot dogs. It was male bonding at its best. We knew hot dogs were no good for us, which is precisely why we bought them and for the moment (until this moment, perhaps) we had no one to answer to. In fact, we went back for seconds.

Four Winds defeated Hankinson 70-64 to take fifth place in the tournament. The Shiloh Christian Skyhawks defeated the BCN Bison 68-55.

I loved sitting in the big arena exchanging commentary with my friend, studying the fans, the glee clubs, the vanity T-shirts, the mascots, the cheerleaders, the often imprecise halftime acts, the stern referees with their hands locked behind their backs in the "ready" position, the half-tearful pride of parents and the grim seriousness of the state's top athletes.

After two hot dogs, I was more or less comatose and ready for action - somebody else's, that is.

To my mind, Class B is village and town ball, not city basketball. I can understand why Minot Bishop Ryan, Bismarck Shiloh, Williston Trinity Christian, Fargo Oak Grove and Dickinson Trinity are counted amongst B teams, owing to the size of their schools, but the simple truth is that these are city kids in a state where the gulf between essentially urban and essentially rural is wide and widening. "Regent, Marmarth, you're my size; give me Tuttle, there I'll thrive."

In some important way, the greater "sophistication" and confidence of the city players detracts from the authenticity of the league. I'm certainly not saying that players from Mott or New Leipzig are rubes, but their comparative innocence is both life-affirming and utterly charming. I like to see some traffic confusion in Bismarck during the tournament. I like the lovely shyness of the athletes and hometown fans, including adults. I admire the civility and modesty of spirit that are still among the prime reasons for raising children in a rural or semi-rural environment. Perhaps I am romanticizing this a little, but it has some of the feel of Lake Wobegon to me, and it makes me glad to be alive, and makes me feel more like a North Dakotan than usual. When I was growing up in Dickinson, we treated the kids from Gladstone and South Heart with fierce condescension. How could they possibly know the heady cosmopolitanism of a city of 15,000 people? When I look back, I'm not sure whether to blush or flagellate myself.

It's not just the rural-urban divide that has diminished the appeal of the Class B tournament. We now have so much access to national media, including virtually nonstop basketball broadcasting, both at the professional level and at what still passes for "amateur" college basketball, that fan expectations either are or are perceived to be very high. The Civic Center has jumped on this bandwagon with video simulcasting, replay monitors, ear-piercing rock music interludes during breaks, incessant audio and visual commercial advertising, animation after dunks, fouls and outstanding jump shots, and of course the ubiquitous "let's get ready to rumble" mantra of American sporting events. It feels to me like big city wannabe-ism. It detracts from the North Dakota spirit and it distracts our attention from the real drama on the floor.

As with everything, I wish we would just get back to basics.

The Four Winds-Hankinson game was the more exciting of the two, if only because whenever American Indians and white athletes compete in North Dakota, there is, whether we like it or not, an undercurrent of racial tension. In the Shiloh-Barnes County North game, there was plenty of zeal on both sides and what used to be called "school spirit," but there was no edge to the game. Then came Four Winds vs. Hankinson. Suddenly, the whole Civic Center felt like those minutes just before a massive thunderstorm breaks over the Plains. The arena was bursting with kinetic energy and edginess. It was great to see a huge (and very young) American Indian cheering section.

There is pride and then there is Indian pride.

I just love Indian basketball. It wasn't so much in evidence this year, but as often as not Indian ball consists of almost unceasing streaking from one end of the court to another. I remember seeing a game on television last year in which the non-Indian team set up complicated plays, passed the ball methodically back and forth over and over, and eventually isolated someone who shot a jump shot from a good floor position. Then the American Indians got the ball, sprinted down the floor at breakneck speed, tripping speed, and the first person within range shot an often impossible shot, often enough with success. It's just thrilling to watch that kind of ball, though I'm guessing the coaches are not altogether fond of it.

White people cannot possibly know what it is to be a young Indian in North Dakota. I certainly don't pretend to understand what that must be like, but I can see the shyness and the standoffishness, the diffidence and the defiance in the Indian athletes and, often enough, their adult fans. It's hard to talk about this, because I think we all perceive some good new energies along the white-Indian divide, thanks in part to the Lewis and Clark bicentennial, and we don't want to jinx what is comparatively an era of good feeling. But one does not have to probe very deep to see the lingering underlying racism in North Dakota.

I saw some half-suppressed bigotry in a few of the white fans who sat around us, so I cheered with extra joy when Tony Ironheart exhibited his enormous grace, speed and skill as the leader of Four Winds. It was breathtaking.

On the other hand, sports are one of the few arenas in which the races really mix on something like an equal level. Most adult whites whom I know don't have much actual contact with Indians, no matter what their politics or their sympathies. Because sports, and the military, bring disparate peoples together, they serve as America's laboratories for encouraging mutual tolerance. Here's how Chuck put it: "The BB floor may be one of the few places Indian youth and non-Indian youth come together in any meaningful way that can help develop respect for one another." Maybe these young people can show their adults how to act. We saw Hankinson kids grab the hand of an Indian on the floor and help him up. We saw Four Winds players do the same for Hankinson kids. We saw conversations (about an Indian's tattoo) occurring during breaks in the action.

We drove home in silence, lost in reveries for our own youths, and we vowed to return next year - but, maybe this time, no hot dogs.

(Clay Jenkinson is the Theodore Roosevelt scholar-in-residence at Dickinson State University. He lives in Bismarck. Contact Jenkinson at Jeffysage@;aol.com.)