Craig Daily Press

Craig — It’s minutes before tip off Saturday between Moffat County High School and Silver Creek High School in Longmont. The stakes are high — the winner of the contest to come extends its season, lives to play one more game and inches closer to every team’s goal.

Winning a state championship.

The court is silent, and only muffled voices from the audience can be heard.

The Bulldogs signal their entrance onto the court with the drumming of bouncing basketballs in perfect sync.

The crowd erupts when they hear the sound.

For a group of devoted, MCHS parents, it doesn’t matter that the game is more than 200 miles from home. They’re here and they’re loud, just like any game, whether it’s at home or on the road.

Keeping that cheer section strong — especially on the road — is important, parents said.

“It is very important to have a cheer section, for all the girls to have their family and friends and their team carrying on from their home town,” Tammy Workman, MCHS senior Markie Workman’s mother, said.

“Sometimes we outnumber the locals,” Judy Kendall, MCHS senior Amy Dilldine’s mother, said with several other supporters in the crowd nodding their agreement with her.

This may be a playoff game — thus its importance is magnified and the zeal of the parents fervent — but the level of support for games is usually strong with the Bulldogs, she said.

“It’s very important,” Kendall said. “I think the girls appreciate it.

“We have chapstick, gum, whatever the girls need,” she added.

Kendall said traveling to the games and supporting the team is something her and other parents have been doing since the girls were young.

“These girls have been playing together since kindergarten, she said. “It’s been a bond since then.”

And with all those years to practice, each has their own different way of dealing with pre-game jitters.

“We’re trying to calm the nerves down by not thinking about basketball,” Amy Dilldine’s father, Tim Dilldine said.

The Workmans, Tammy and her husband, Mike, however, are quite the opposite.

“We talk about basketball,” Workman said laughing. “My husband and I, we talk about basketball. The game, the stats, about every team.

“We’ve been doing this for a long time.”

Win or lose, the support from friends and family never dies.

Late in the game against Silver Creek, it becomes apparent the Bulldogs’ season will end here. The clock ticks away slowly with Moffat County’s score short of the home team’s. There will be no trip to the Final Four. There will be no more games at all.

That doesn’t stop Bulldog supporters from chanting one last time. “Bulldogs” begins with a thunder.

It was as loud as the cheering before the game, coming from both sides of the stands.

“We tried,” Kendall said. “We supported them as far as they could go.”

“They’ve had a really good season,” Dilldine said.