Celebration continues for state champion Rockland Bulldogs

ROCKLAND — The Bulldogs received a champion’s welcome when they returned to Rockland after winning the Boys Basketball State Championship two weeks ago.

The party continues for the Bulldogs, who last week signed their new championship banner in preparation for its raising to the rafters of the Rockland High School gym.

Head coach Shae Neal reflected on the season that was during his team’s banner-signing ceremony and potato bar fundraiser.

“It’s so dang hard to win. So when you do it, you enjoy it. As a coach, you look at your players and your staff members, and you see the joy and excitement in their eyes — it’s something that they’ve worked for all season long. When you have that in the bag, no one can take that away from you,” Neal told EastIdahoSports.com “We’re still celebrating a week later, the boys still haven’t come down from the high.”

For Rockland’s five seniors — Woodrow Lowder, Isaac Held, Ethan Permann, Iver Hendrickson and CJ Wilson, who was out all season with an injury — it was extra special. The. seniors were in eighth grade when Rockland won its first-ever state championship, at the end of the 2021-22 season.

This title was something they wanted since several of them were in attendance at the Ford Idaho Center for the 1A D2 championship back in 2022. So those seniors led the celebration, which began at the final buzzer of Rockland’s 70-67 victory over Garden Valley, and still hasn’t ended.

Hendrickson, who rode in the Rockland athletics van that carried, primarily, the younger players, said that the three-plus-hour ride home from Nampa was “honestly really quiet.”

Held was in the other van, which Rockland has taken to calling the “Growlers,” where, as Neal recalled, players and coaches were laughing and watching streams of the other state championship games.

“It was pretty active for that first hour. But I think towards the end (of the ride), it was kinda like we were sick of seeing each other — we lived with each other all week,” Held said, joking that by the end of the ride he was sick of smelling his teammates.

When the Bulldogs got back to town, they offloaded the Growlers and hopped onto a fire truck for a small parade through town, officially kicking off their championship celebration.

“We were loaded up, and we had people lining the streets … and we just had a little celebration — rang the bell,” Permann said.

“It’s a tradition,” Held added, “every time a team wins a state championship, we go line up, everyone in town, there are some fireworks that they light off.”

Neal called it a special experience, provided by an adoring town of roughly 250 people, most, if not all, of whom were in Nampa for the tournament.

“It’s so much excitement, coming into town,” Neal said. “You roll in at 8 o’clock at night, the whole town’s out, fireworks are going off, the streets are lined with people honking their horns and waving. Just to see that welcome-home, job-well-done type of community support really, really goes a long way.”

Many of those same loving fans packed into the tiny Rockland High School cafeteria, just big enough for the student body of around 50 kids, to look on as players and coaches signed a banner that will soon join others — including last year’s girls’ basketball team — hanging from the gym rafters. Players signed posters, basketball balls and other memorabilia.

Mentally, Neal has already started preparing for next season, when he will lean on a seniors-to be Xavier Parrish, this year’s All-Tournament MVP, Zach Permann, the All-Tournament Defensive MVP, and Brayzen Gibbs, the All-Tournament Sixth-Man Award winner.

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But moving on is going to be even harder than it has been in years past.

“It was just a fun year,” he said. “It was one of those that you just don’t want to end. Some years, you’re like, ‘Yeah, I’m ready for summer to come around.’ These guys, I could hang out with these guys — they’re funny, they’re good kids, academics, sportsmanship. … That’s the culture that we’re trying to build here, that we have built over the last nine years. It’s really, really cool to see.”