For the last 5 years every spring a spirit war is waged all through Missoula all in hope of winning the Golden Goat Gertie. For the first four years the competition was held between Sentinel High School’s Spartans and Hellgate High School’s Knights. But after watching for years the Big Sky High School Eagles wanted in on all of the action. 

The Golden Goat game isn’t just about basketball, though the boys and girls games do hold a certain amount of sway in who wins; it mostly comes down to who has the most school spirit. The panel of judges score both teams on attendance, special T-shirts, dance and cheer team performances, sportsmanship, and lastly overall creativity. 

So in order to give Hellgate the best advantage at winning, we engaged in a whole week of spirit boosting activities ranging from ‘anything but a backpack’ day all the way to senior citizens for the upperclassmen vs. babies for the underclassmen. 

During the school day on Friday we held an assembly where Hellgate was taught its chants, played games, watched a presentation and all around boosted morale and excitement for the coming game. 

After that Hellgate and Big Sky both held little pre-games in two of the gyms at the Adams Center where attendees could get free pizza, pompoms, temporary tattoos and get ready with their friends. We then grouped up together and entered the basketball court with a sense of spirit that Big Sky could only dream of. 

The basketball games started with the girls team who fought tirelessly until the very end. Unfortunately they couldn’t score enough in time to beat Big Sky’s girls losing by only a few points. 

We were then shown a very interesting time travel themed halftime show by Big Sky’s cheerleaders and dance team. Their theme was about making Big Sky be a part of the original Golden Goat competition and how now that they were in they were going to work as hard as they could to win it. 

 Following that our dance and cheer team came onto the floor with a whole dance squad of students and teachers from Hellgate who put the time and effort into learning and perfecting the dances so that they could show Big Sky what a halftime show really was. 

After our cheer, dance, and student/teacher performance the boys basketball game began. And through the troubles and tribulations the Knights managed to pull out a well-deserved win over the Eagles, which left Hellgate and Big Sky around evenly split based off of the games. 

Finally both Hellgate and Big Sky went down to the court to hear the final results. After both teams had crowded  in around the announcer Hellgate was announced to have won by a mere two points. Following that was large-scale screaming, cheering, laughing, joy and pride for each and every Hellgate student in attendance. 

Though the rules of the goat game have changed so that the loser of the Goat game will have to sit out, Hellgate is looking forward to playing in the Big Sky again in the coming years and coming games. 

Now that Goat season comes to an end, Gertie is back residing in the only home she has ever known, Hellgate. Sentinel and Big Sky are all left to wonder what future Goat Games will hold and who will be able to claim victory and take Gertie home next year.