Basketball legend George Yelloweyes

Editor's note: This article about George Yelloweyes, eastern Montana basketball great, originally appeared in the February 26 issue of the Terry Tribune.

by Norm Clarke

Special to the Tribune

The legendary life of George Yelloweyes illuminated Montana like a comet.

He lit up basketball scoreboards, too, leaving demoralized defenders in his wake.

Some Montana sports historians consider him the greatest shooter in state history.

Glenn Kuehn, a 1960 Terry High graduate, witnessed two golden moments associated with the 5-foot-6 phenom. More than 60 years later, Yelloweyes is listed among the state's top 50 players and was inducted into the Montana Indian Hall of Fame.

Yelloweyes, who grew up on the Northern Cheyenne reservation near Ashland, played three seasons for State Industrial School, a youth corrections facility later known as Pine Hills.

Kuehn's first frozen image involves a legendary overtime buzzer beater in the District 4-C tournament in Miles City.  

It happened on Feb. 29, 1957 in a semi-final game between Terry and State School. 

Harold Wahl, Terry's leading scorer that season, and Duane Morast were senior starters. The trio of Ken Bolin, Don Falkenstern and Arthur Anderson were juniors. 

Wahl recalls coach Marvin Carlson substituting junior guard Eddie Martin into the lineup late in the overtime, after the fourth quarter ended in a 46-46 tie.

 Kuehn, a freshman guard, was on the Terry bench, under the Terriers' basket, "the closest spectator," he said.

With Terry leading 50-49, Martin fouled Yelloweyes with three seconds left. Yelloweyes calmly hit both freethrows to put S.I.S. in front, 51-50.

According to Kuehn, Morast inbounded the basketball from under the State School basket to Wahl who was a quarter way up the court on the right-hand side.  Wahl saw Martin open near the half-court line.

"Wahl passed the ball to Eddie, who turned and let a final desperation shot fly from mid-court."  Kuehn added, "The game-ending buzzer blared as Martin's shot was in the air! Allll-net!"  

It was Martin's only points of the night. He had scored two points the night before.

"Harold was a good and smart ballplayer," said Morast, who had 14 points for the night. "If he saw someone closer he would have passed the ball, especially with time expiring."

Miles City Star sports editor Gordie Spear memorialized the shot with a banner headline that went something like this:

"From goat to hero in three seconds--Terry's Martin"

Not everyone agrees on the distance of the dramatic shot. Wahl believes Martin took the shot near the top of the key. The Billings Gazette's account, probably reported by Spear, listed it as a 25-footer.

Yelloweyes, in what was his only loss to Terry, finished in a three-way tie for SIS's scoring honors with 13.

Terry lost the championship game, 85-67, to Wibaux, for the second year in a row.

A year later, State School hammered Terry 58-39 in the district tournament. S.I.S. made it to its first state tournament but lost two in a row. Sportswriters saw enough of Yelloweyes' talent to make him a first-team all-tournament selection.

Out to atone for his sub-par debut in the 1958 state tourney, Yelloweyes was a man on a mission in 1959.

During the Eastern Divisional in Wolf Point, a spirited scoring duel broke out between Yelloweyes and Brockton's Ernie Bighorn. Yelloweyes scored 27, 45 and 30 points, for an average of 34 per game. Bighorn averaged 30.4 over four games. (Sidenote: In the early 1990s, while I was writing sports in Denver, a Broncos cheerleader came up and introduced herself. Her name: Lisa Bighorn, Ernie's daughter. Her dad lived in Miles City, she said, and he had asked her to say hello.) 

After State School defeated Medicine Lake in the Eastern Divisional title game, Yelloweyes was given the game ball during the trophy presentation.

"The crowd started chanting, 'One more time,'" Kuehn recalled. "He went to center court and made it. The crowd started chanting again. He turned to the other basket and did it again. It was unbelievable!"

Kuehn, who played against Yelloweyes or watched him play at least seven times, had nothing but superlatives for the electrifying legend.

"He was a super competitor," said Kuehn. "He wasn't a showman. He didn't play dirty. He wasn't a jerk. The best word to describe him is focused. He didn't play one position. He floated all over the floor, looking for a shot. And he was crafty. Sly as a fox."

Yelloweyes' high-arching rainbows were a sight to behold. "But he had  more of a set shot than a jump shot. He shot from his waist and he was very quick at getting it off."

Yelloweyes' torrid shooting continued at the state tournament in Helena. He scored 21 in a 64-46 loss to eventual champion Superior in the opener. Propelled by Yelloweyes' state record 46 points, S.I.S bounced back with a 77-71 victory over defending state champion Belgrade. He hit 21 of 44 field goals and scored 20 in the fourth quarter. At one point he scored eight points in a minute. 

He added 31 against Townsend to put S.I.S. in the consolation game. With Yelloweyes running on empty, the Beavers took fourth, losing to Gildford, the eventual 1960 champion, 70-47. Counting his 16 in the finale, he ended up with 119 points in four games, for a per game average of 29.7. He repeated as a first-team all-tourney selection.

From State School, he enrolled at Miles Community College, where he averaged 24 points a game.

The following summer he was injured fighting a forest fire and was never the same player.

He spent time in the state prison in Deer Lodge for being in possession of stolen goods (a tire). His father, Oliver Yelloweyes, had spent a year in a federal penitentiary for alleging killing a steer that belonged to a rancher near Ashland.

George Yelloweyes' sister, Susie Carlson, was known in pro wrestling circles as the wife of Orville Carlson, a former steer wrestler-turned-wrestler from Ekalaka. Known as "Cowboy" Carlson, he was a fixture on the Texas pro wrestling circuit. She would dress as an American Indian princess and lead him to the ring.

Born Oct. 10, 1939, George Yelloweyes died after a construction accident in 1990. He was 50

After his death, his former S.I.S. coach Joe McDonald wrote a letter to the editor of the Billings Gazette saying Yelloweyes lived on Apache reservations in Arizona until shortly before his death.

McDonald wrote: "His body is gone but the memory of this dazzling play, his clever bullet-like passes, his quick jump shots and the long, looping outside shots will be with many of us forever."