Beyond the X: Rez Ball fuels basketball fever in Arizona's Navajo Nation

Pride, escape and Caesars Palace

From Chinle to Holbrook to Winslow to Monument Valley to Tuba City to Ganado and anywhere else on or bordering the Navajo reservation, many of the boys and girls basketball players are oblivious to the mines, the poverty, the alcoholism, the witchcraft, the air they breathe. It’s basketball day and night and when they’re sleeping. It’s finding a weekend tournament, a gym, a makeshift basket.

Everything comes together inside a gymnasium. It’s a reunion for families, clans. It’s for everybody.

Natay graduated from Chinle in 1983 and played for the Wildcats in Troglia's first season as coach.

Chinle played in the community center that still sits on campus and seated 1,500. Considerably smaller and antiquated — described as a tiny, loud tin shed with low ceilings and wood bleachers — Rez Ball was in full force even then.

Scalpers sold tickets for 10 times more than their worth.

"They literally camped out the night before to get tickets," Natay said. "We played in front of 1,500 every night and it was loud."

The fire marshal often asked Troglia to tell the overflow crowd to leave.

"OK, let's go kick them out," Troglia would tell the fire marshal. "You want a riot on your hands?"

Troglia, a character to be sure, had a large impact on Natay.

"He instilled values in me and a drive to set goals and make things happen," Natay said.

The first thing Natay made happen was to earn a bachelor's degree at Northern Arizona in business administration. Right after graduation, he could have headed south, but despite 60 percent unemployment on the reservation, he headed home and landed a job at the Chinle Unified School District.

Twenty-two years later, he's still there and his presence is felt everywhere. 

"Right place, right opportunity," he said.

Said Troglia: "He's a genius with money. He's a stickler for doing the job right. He built this place."

"This place" being the Wildcat Den, the reservation's crowning man-made jewel.

Natay helped first finance the schools — "education is always first," he said — but then zeroed in on sports facilities.

"Why can't reservation kids have equal or better facilities?" he said. "My drive was to make sure our kids have the best equipment possible."

Through what Natay called "sound fiscal management over years" and the Federal Impact Aid Program, Chinle built the $24 million Wildcat Den along with a $7-million aquatics and fitness center in 2007.

"We've been told it's the best facility in Arizona and maybe even the west region," Natay said.

No detail – both structurally and culturally – was ignored. The outside walls match the beautiful color schemes of Chinle's true natural jewel, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, a unit of the National Park Service that has been called an intimate Grand Canyon.

Inside, the stadium seating is surrounded by colored panels of the four cardinal directions, yellow (west), white (east), black (north) and blue (south), and Spider Rock is painted at midcourt inside a setting sun, a tribute to the monument's most notable feature.

The locker rooms are posh with carpeting and Wildcat logos everywhere. Each locker stall features a padded chair and each locker is paneled with mahogany.

"It's state of the art, man," Troglia said. "It's just gorgeous and hard to describe unless you've seen it."

What makes the Wildcat Den even more stunning aesthetically is its stark contrast to the scenery heading into Chinle and down its dusty, unlined four-lane road.

There's no movie theater in Chinle. No miniature golf, skate parks or bike lanes. There's a grocery store, three gas stations, a diner, four fast-food establishments, two laundromats and a Wells Fargo Bank branch. There's seven schools and at least that many churches.

The 16-square mile census-designated place claims about 6,000 residents and was the site of the 1864 peace conference between Kit Carson and the Navajos that ended the war between the tribe and the United States of America.

Driving into town on U.S. Highway 191 isn't very scenic. Nor is it inviting when one parks next to the Wildcat Den.

"It's like you're walking in skid row then going into Caesars Palace," Obert said. "You'll see stray dogs wandering through the parking lot. Driving here, you'll see shacks and gutted-out houses. Cars are up on blocks. You just see a lot of poverty and you feel for it."

In that regard, the Wildcat Den, like basketball itself, is a place of great pride and escape, Natay said

"When you drive into Chinle and see this facility, you don't know what's in here until you walk in," he said. "When you walk in, you're in awe because this isn't Chinle. This is something you'd see if you walked in at the US Airways Center (home of the Phoenix Suns).

"It's a chance for everyone to escape what's really going on in the reservation. You forget about poverty. You forget about the social ills and everyone is here to have a good time."

And for two days, close to 12,000 fans (6,000 each day) did. Even in defeat.

With snow falling outdoors, locals from every age group were entertained, well-fed and able to express themselves.

The younger crowd walked the concourse orderly, an American Graffiti cruising display on foot, checking out kids from other parts of the reservation. In the stands, the cheers were spontaneous and loud, and the boos boisterous and on-point on bad calls or when teams stalled. There's no shot clock in Arizona and the Rez fans like their game up-tempo.

"It's just a good social venue for everyone to escape and forget about everything," Natay said. "You feel like you're somewhere else.

"Then you walk out and you're out on the Rez again."