The Snake Pit looks a lot different today than it did 25 years ago.

On March 25, 2000, the arena that is formally known as Memorial Gymnasium was dark, dingy and loud when former Eastern Washington basketball player Michael Lewis won a lackluster slam dunk contest at the 16th Annual Wayne Estes Northwest Basketball Championships.

A few years ago, my favorite gym underwent a facelift that turned out beautifully. In addition to the new court and improved seating, the wall on the west end was opened up, allowing for more light and a space for fans to watch the games from the baseline.

It also got a paint job and some new lights, and that really brightened up the place.

Overall, the renovations made the best gym in the state even better.

As I took the court in the Snake Pit for my first varsity game as a basketball official last week, I kept looking around the gym. I thought about how it used to look, and I thought about all the incredible games that took place there.

I looked over to where Shaughn McKeon and Rochie Estes almost came to blows after a hard foul in a Butte Central-Anaconda basketball game. I looked up to where I believed the infamous fight between fans of Anaconda and Dillon went down 35 years ago or so.

I remembered watching Todd Hildreth set Butte High’s school record with 40 points in a 2005 overtime win over the Copperheads. I remembered the night that Gwenn Abbott, Lexie Nelson and the Bulldogs beat Torry Hill, Lisa Laslovich and the Copperheads in an overtime thriller in which the officials accidentally used a boys’ ball instead of a girls’ ball.

That was the best high school basketball game I have ever seen.

As the band played and the players warmed up, I thought about the officials I used to see standing where I was standing — guys like John Monaco, Dan “Squeak” Laughlin, Mark Vukovich and Jeff Frank.

More than anything, though, I was thinking about Tony Laslovich and Chris Shelton back on that night of March 25, 2000.

Lewis won the dunk contest, mainly because Shelton did not come to town to defend his title. Tony, the public address announcer who made sure the contestants knew they were not performing up to the high standard of the previous dunk contests, thought Justin Lyons should have won after he jumped over a friend and threw down a two-handed slam.

Tony said the judging of that dunk contest was the worst had seen in his life, and he repeatedly told that to the judges over the sound system.

Then he turned to me and, with spit flying with each syllable, gave me the greatest quote of my writing career.

Here is how I put it in the next day’s Montana Standard:

“Chris Shelton would have rolled over in his grave,” Laslovich said of the still-living two-time champion who awed the crowd last year with a cartwheel dunk.

I can still see the look on Tony’s face as we sat next to each other on the old, cramped scorer’s bench.

It was the most Tony moment of a life filled with classic Tony moments.

That great Shelton quote was one that I actually misquoted when I wrote about Tony when he was battling cancer in 2013. He passed away on July 20, 2014, just nine days after his 57th birthday.

Instead of “would have rolled over in his grave,” I wrote that “Chris Shelton would be spinning in his grave” in that column for ButteSports.com.

The meaning, however, was still the same. And it is still the best quote I have ever published.

It is the best quote I will ever publish, and it makes me laugh every time I think about it. A quarter of a century later, Tony still has me laughing.

I met Tony about a year before that quote, and we became instant friends. We liked each other even though he was a huge Packers fan and I am a nutty Bears fan.

Every time I drove to Anaconda to cover a game, I would look for Tony. I would look for him whenever the Copperheads came to Butte to play.

I still look for him, even though it has been more than a decade since he passed away.

Sometimes when I’m officiating, I will look into the crowd and see a guy in a hoodie. For a second, I swear it is Tony.

I miss that guy so much because we had so many great conversations. Tony was the ultimate voice of reason. He always offered the greatest advice, and he made me laugh while doing it.

When a huge block/charge call did not go the way of the Copperheads when they played the Bulldogs in a game of No. 1-ranked teams at the Civic Center in 2008, Anaconda fans went crazy. An assistant coach of the Copperheads got a technical foul for jumping out and stopping the referee on his way back down the court.

Tony, sitting in the center of the Anaconda crowd behind the team bench, kept the call in perspective, even though his daughter, Lisa, was a starter on the Anaconda team.

I was at the scorer’s table not too far way, so I could hear Tony tell the crowd something to the effect of “Sure, it might have been a bad call. But we can’t all lose our minds over it.”

It didn’t stop the griping and yelling, but he calmed the crowed down a bit. Copperhead fans listened to Tony.

Nobody in the history of people had a better perspective on life than Tony. Nobody was a better sports official, either. I would put Tony up against any official who ever lived.

He was so good that he was selected to officiate 15 state basketball tournaments, and he usually had messy hair when he refereed.

You have probably noticed by now that 98.7 percent of the officials who get State tournaments have either perfect hair or they have shave all their hair off. They also typically wear size smedium shirts to show off their biceps.

I got that number, by the way, thanks to a scientific study. You cannot argue with science.

Tony had the muscles to show off, but he was also a “half bald guy,” as his brother Mike would say. The hair that he had left was usually shaped by the hat he wore to the gym, just like mine.

Tony also refereed 14 playoff football games and 17 state volleyball tournaments. He got those because he was known to be a great official who brought a great perspective to every game he ever worked.

He brought that great perspective into every life he touched as well.

Tony was exactly the referee I want to be. He was exactly the person I want to be.

Over the last three seasons, I have worked many subvarsity games at the Snake Pit. Each time I thought about Tony and what he would have said had he seen me in stripes.

This time, though, it seemed different, probably because my fellow officials made a big deal out of me working my first varsity game. They made it seem like a monumental night.

I got to work with a couple of great officials in Brianna Bernardino and Corey Cutler, and the game went off without a hitch.

That I worked that first game on Tony’s court made it a night that I will never forget.

There was only one thing that could have possibly made it better. I would have killed to work that game with Tony Laslovich.

It would have probably been even more fun than sitting next to him during that boring dunk contest.

 — Bill Foley, who only wishes he could participate in a boring dunk contest, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 or Bluesky at @foles74.bsky.social. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.