PABLO - Salish Kootenai College and other tribal schools in the state of Montana are establishing a basketball league for play between November and March. Lady Bison head coach Juan Perez said that five schools have agreed to be in the league for both men's' and women's' basketball teams. The schedule has already been formed for the upcoming season.

"It's pretty set in stone," Perez said.

In the past, the men's and women's basketball teams have scheduled games freely with a variety of other schools before playing in the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) National Championships in March. Those schools that SKC schedules include are members of the NAIA and junior colleges.

"We have relationships with other mainstream schools that we schedule games with," Perez said.

According to him, there was a league between the tribal schools of Montana in the 80s and 90s. Before SKC president Joe McDonald retired this year, he started to get the wheels turning for a new basketball league.

"It happened before, but it kind of died off," he said. "President McDonald had started a conversation in the spring with other presidents about it."

Perez said that it will allow the other schools to get their basketball teams started earlier in the year, and allow SKC to play teams they'll be facing at the AIHEC National Championships.

"The relationship is good between us and all the other schools," Perez said. "We help each other out."

One thing that does need to be finalized with the league is a name and the academic eligibility standards.

"There is still some work to be done," Perez said. "Other schools are smaller than SKC."

SKC currently offers four-year degrees and has two-year and four-year students. Athletes at the school have to maintain full-time student status, a 2.0 GPA and accumulate a certain amount of credits every year to show that they're working towards a degree.

Perez said that SKC's requirements are more stringent than those for schools playing in the AIHEC National Championships. He said that they are looking to make the AIHEC standards tougher. Some schools in the new league are two-year schools so the requirements will need to be worked out.

The schools currently slated to be members of the league, which doesn't have a name yet, are Blackfeet Community College, Stone Child College, Fort Peck Community College and Fort Belknap College.

A league championship will be held at the end of the season and the host of that championship will rotate through the schools.

Perez said Stone Child is expected to host the first league championship since they just built a new gym for their basketball program.

Each school will host a round-robin tournament where teams will come to play at each other's respective locations. Each school will be responsible for running their round robin tournament. However, that doesn't mean every team will be at each tournament.

"There will be some weekends that we won't be able to be a part of," Perez said.

Some dates in the league schedule may have to be modified.

The league will add five more weekends of playing and may cut into SKC's other scheduling, but will solve the problem of finding games in late February and early March when mainstream schools are having their conference tournaments.

For more information, go to http://www.sku.edu.