Northwest Indian College Eagles Basketball Team Wins AIHEC Division II Championship

The Northwest Indian College (NWIC) Eagles team traveled to Crow Agency, MT late March to the 2019 American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) Basketball Tournament hosted by Little Bighorn College in Crow Agency, Montana.

The Eagles walked away with a Division II Championship title! NWIC played teams such as Leech Lake Tribal College (Minnesota), Muscogee College (Oklahoma), Salish Kootenai College (Montana), and Fort Peck(Montana). Congratulations to NWIC students Samuel Marqueda, Tlingit, and Gavin Carlos,Tohono O’odham Nation, for receiving All-Star awards! These individuals were selected based off of their performance throughout the tournament.

Congratulations to Tyrone Dorris, Snohomish Tribe, for receiving 2019 AIHEC Scholar Athlete of the Year. This award is a merit-based award given to one male and female student athlete of all the AIHEC athletes, of which there were 10 men’s teams. Dorris is currently studying Native Environmental Science at NWIC and said “This was the hardest I’ve tried in school. It felt good to keep up my grades, and I was surprised and honored to learn that I received this award.”

AIHEC is the teams’ biggest tournament of the year. It is a national tournament for Tribal Colleges and Universities, which brings students together from all over the nation and allows an opportunity for the students to grow and broaden their world view. Michael Shjang, Hopi, NWIC Native Studies Leadership (NSL) alumni and NWIC Athletic Director said, “As an indigenous athlete, a lot of our athletes have role models in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and National Basketball Association (NBA). This puts fuel to their fire and motivates them to work harder on and off the court. AIHEC gives our student athletes that platform to be the athlete they want to be. Little do they know, now they are serving as role models for the youth watching them, which I think is great!”