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Brodie Kelly saw me at the Butte Civic Center that Thursday night of the 2012 Class A State basketball tournament, but he didn’t want to talk to me.

He didn’t even want to look at me after he read the sub headline that topped my tournament preview story in The Montana Standard.

The sub head read, “All the usual suspects in for tourney.”

There was one huge problem. Butte Central, one of the most usual suspects, was not playing in that tournament. For the first time since Kelly took over coaching his alma mater before the 2004-05 season, the Maroons were not playing at State.

For most of that time, I was the writer covering the Maroons for the paper, so I knew that there was no team that was more of a perennial Class A State title contender than Kelly’s Maroons.

I did not even see the headline in the print edition of the paper before I covered the tournament games that day. So, I didn’t know why my old classmate was giving me the stink eye.

A few days later, I got the chance to talk to Brodie and tell him that I did not write that sub headline. That was written by an unnamed page designer, and I threw him directly under the bus.

I did not want Brodie or the Maroons thinking that I was trying to slight them in any way.

Kelly’s Maroons qualified for the Class A State tournament the first seven seasons he coached. The remarkable thing about that is that the conference Central was playing in — the Central A or Southwestern A — only sent two teams to the dance each season.

Those were seven nerve-wracking divisional tournaments that the Maroons survived to make it seven straight State tournaments.

Fast forward a dozen years, and the Maroons’ run under Kelly got even better. When the Class A State tournament is played at the Butte Civic Center March 7-9, it will mark the 18^th time in 20 seasons that the Maroons will play at State.

That run includes 13 trips to the semifinals, two second-place trophies, three third-place showings and two state championships. BC advanced to Saturday of state 16 times in those 18 seasons.

Central missed the big dance in 2012 and 2014, but only after coming up short by razor-thin margins in competitive divisional tournaments.

When you look at those accomplishments in his 20-year career, you have to say that Kelly is on the very short list of high school basketball coaches who could claim to be the best in the history of the Mining City.

Through 500 games, Kelly’s Maroons are 351-149. Only Butte High legend Harry “Swede” Dahlberg has won more games. Dahlberg’s Bulldogs went 407-298-1 in 29 seasons from 1923 through 1951.

The way the BC program is headed, you can expect Kelly to pass Dahlberg in victories in three or four seasons.

If you would have told me that Brodie would coach at all when I met him in 1987, I would have thought you were crazy. That is when we started the seventh grade at Butte Central Junior High School.

Brodie, the quarterback of our football team in junior high, was a leader, but he wasn’t a vocal leader. He wasn’t a vocal anything.

He sat right next to me in homeroom class, and it wasn’t until we started football practice that I heard Brodie’s voice.

He was not shy. He just did not say anything unless he had something to say. He called the plays in the huddle and then barked out the signals. That was it.

Usually, he would say it all by giving you a what-is-wrong-with-you look. By now, every basketball official in the state knows that look.

We won a lot of junior high football games in two years because Mark O’Connell was the best junior high running back on the planet. We could count on him for more than 100 yards and a couple of touchdowns every game.

But we won a lot of close games because Brodie always found speedy receiver Cam McQueary for a deep touchdown in crunch time.

While he didn’t start at quarterback in high school, Brodie was a key member of the BC team played in the 1992 Class A State championship game.

He was also a key member of BC’s 1992 Class A State championship basketball team.

In fact, Brodie was so good at both sports that he originally signed to play basketball and football at Montana Tech. He ended up focusing on basketball, though.

For my money, Brodie is still the best defensive basketball player who ever played in the Frontier Conference. While playing for Rick Dessing’s Orediggers, Brodie would guard the best player on the other team every night.

That meant he would shut down the post player one night and then stop the point guard the next.

He also specializes in stopping the opponent as a coach.

Only a handful of high school coaches in Butte can even compare to what Brodie has done at BC or what Dahlberg did at Butte High.

John Thatcher won a title at BC and took Butte High to the chipper twice. Pat Foley, who won 161 games in 12 years, led Butte High’s boys to the 1984 title. His teams also took second twice and third once.

Bob Ray won 141 games in 11 years leading Butte High’s boys. He coached the Bulldogs to the 1957 and 1958 titles. His teams came within a three-point loss to Missoula from winning three straight crowns.

Meg Murphy and Mike Thompson both won a pair of girls’ State titles with the Maroons, and Jeff Arntson had a tremendous run with the Butte High girls. Arntson’s Bulldogs won 131 games in 10 years, and Butte High played for the title three times in four years from 2006 through 2009.

Ted Ackerman’s Bulldog girls won 96 games in eight seasons in the 1980s, and Tom Berg coached the 1992 BC boys to the State title. 

Brodie’s résumé certainly stacks up with those great Mining City coaches. His Maroons shared the Class A State title with Hardin in 2020, when COVID canceled the last day of the season. His Maroons won it by themselves in 2022, and BC battled back from a semifinal loss to place third at State last year.

That gave BC its fourth trophy in five years.

BC has been playing basketball since 1915, and the Maroons have won 20 games or more in a season 14 times. Brodie was the coach of five of those teams.

This year, the Maroons will take a 17-4 record into the State tournament. That comes after losing 2023 Montana Gatorade Player of the Year Dougie Peoples to graduation.

The names come and go, but the results remain the same. Kelly’s Maroons just keep on winning.

He has won with tall teams, and he has won with short teams. He has won with teams expected to be good, and he has won with teams that entered the season with low expectations.

This year, the Maroons have won while using three freshmen in key minutes. 

No matter the names or numbers in the height and class columns of the roster, Brodie’s Maroons always play just like Brodie did. They are always fundamentally sound, and they are always fearless.

They always give their coach everything they have night after night and possession after possession, and they never make excuses.

For 20 seasons now, watching the Maroons play basketball is like seeing a dozen Brodie Kelly clones take the court every night.

That, more than anything, is why the Maroons are one of the usual suspects at the State tournament year after year.

— Bill Foley, the offensive tackle responsible for half of Brodie’s sacks in junior high school, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.