Horse Clan Bounces Back

Handgames champs. Photo by Paulina Fast Wolf. Copyright Red Cloud Indian School.

Horse Clan Bounces Back

By Colton Sierra ‘14

Aaron Thompson, along with the rest of the Horse Clan handgame team, left Rapid City with a heavy weight lifted off their shoulders because they just won the 2nd annual He Sapa Handgame Tournament. The night before, they were stunned by a St. Francis handgame team that beat them out of the tournament (coincidently in St. Francis) shortly after toying with their emotions.

The He Sapa Handgame Tournament is hosted by the Ateyapi program at the Southwest Middle School, and it serves as a traditional and fun activity that the Lakota youth can be a part of. There were a total of 22 teams that were then divided into an elementary division and a high school division. There were 16 elementary teams and only six high school teams. The high school teams were represented by some of the best handgame teams in all areas around South Dakota. Teams came from Crow Creek, Little Wound, Rapid City, Crazy Horse, and of course, a team from Red Cloud.

“My heart was racing during that final game on Friday night,” said junior Mikala Marrufo. Horse Clan neared defeat four times before they finally met their fate and went home empty handed from the pow-wow in St. Francis.

Broken hearted and discouraged, freshman Wakinyan Forney showed up to the tournament thinking, “There’s probably a lot of really skilled teams here.” Little did he know that they would continue to the championship game undefeated. He told me, “I felt like we pulled through as a team, even though we almost lost every game.”

Horse Clan was seen at the tournament Saturday narrowly winning games and breathing sighs of relief as they moved up in the bracket. In the championship game they lost and were forced to play a rubber match against Crazy Horse. During the rubber match, Aaron Thompson and Britni Iron ‘16 rallied Horse Clan back to the lead. To end it all, Colton Sierra ‘14 and Mikala Marrufo ‘15 put the final nail in the coffin and left Southwest Middle School as champions.