Destiny Team: Tragedy, Teamwork, and Triumph

Meet the Destiny Team—the ten players and manager of the 1939-1940 Sweet Grass High School boys varsity basketball team. There was nothing "bigger" in Big Timber, Montana, than boys basketball, and forwards MacLean Basket, Bob Deegan, Raymond Grande, and Charles Nicholson; guards Sam Duffy, John Boe, Stuart Ellison, and Kenneth O'Dell; Centers Emmett (Bud) Deegan and Bill Ellison; and student manager Don Cameron, were the town's best chance at finally winning that state championship the Sheepherders had missed the year before. But in the middle of the greatest season the team had in years, tragedy would strike, from which the team might not recover. Here is a story of eleven young men who knew the value of hard work and practice, who continued to fight no matter the obstacles, and who grew in ways none of them ever thought possible.