{"id":5508,"date":"2015-02-09T11:24:53","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T18:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=5508"},"modified":"2015-02-11T07:38:49","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T14:38:49","slug":"circle-fans-rally-to-help-culbertson-student-athlete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/02\/circle-fans-rally-to-help-culbertson-student-athlete\/","title":{"rendered":"Circle fans rally to help Culbertson student-athlete"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Shay\"<\/a>

Photo courtesy of Penny Hendrickson<\/p>

Shay Bridges, photographed at courtside during the Culbertson-Circle game Saturday night.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Circle Wildcats lost to the Culbertson Cowboys in their Class C basketball game Saturday night, but what happened just before the game is what people in both towns are likely to remember for a long time to come.<\/p>\n

Eight football players from Circle went through the crowd of about 150 people, collecting donations in football helmets. They raised more than $2,000 for the family of Shay Bridges, a Culbertson basketball player who recently learned he has a pituitary brain tumor.<\/p>\n

Shay\u2019s mother, Melinda Portra, said the experience was overwhelming.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cried,\u201d she said. \u201cI mean, I just don\u2019t even know. There\u2019s no words to describe all the emotions a person feels when people do something so loving.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beth Conroy, of Circle, whose sons came up with the idea of doing the fundraiser, said the two towns, though 100 miles apart, are very close.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s Eastern Montana and it\u2019s a small town, but when somebody\u2019s in need, we really step up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Shay is a 16-year-old junior at Culbertson High. He\u2019d been having trouble with his hormone levels, so his parents, Melinda and Kevin Portra, took him to a local doctor for a checkup last month. An MRI discovered the tumor, which was already twice as large as such tumors usually are when they\u2019re found.<\/p>\n

He was immediately sent to a specialist in Denver, whom he saw on Jan. 26. The doctor put him on a regimen of medications intended to shrink the tumor and to adjust his thyroid levels. He may have to undergo surgery if that doesn’t work.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>This all happened so recently that Portra said she doesn\u2019t know what all the costs will be.\u00a0But their insurance isn\u2019t covering everything, she said, and \u201cjust going to Denver alone is nice and spendy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mary Machart, who has Shay in her Jobs for Montana Graduates class at Culbertson High School, said other students in the\u00a0class started a fundraiser last week, selling \u201cPray 4 Shay\u201d (his jersey number is 4) wristbands. They raised $160 in the first hour of sales and are now up to $500 or $600. Machart said she still has to add it all up.<\/p>\n

And then she heard from Conroy, who told her the Circle football players wanted to do a fundraiser at the Saturday night basketball game. Conroy said the whole thing started with her daughter, McKinna.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was just flipping through Facebook one night and she said, \u2018What\u2019s up with Shay Bridges?\u2019\u201d He had put up a post about his problems with the tumor. That was more than 10 days ago, and Conroy’s\u00a0sons, Colton and Calder, kept talking about trying to do something to help him.<\/p>\n

\"Bands\"<\/a>

Students in a Jobs for Montana Graduates class at Culbertson High School have been selling wristbands to help Shay’s family pay his medical bills.<\/p><\/div>\n

Friday, the day before the basketball game, they came up with the pass-the-helmet idea, modeled after firefighters passing a boot. They rounded up six other football players and went into the stands between the girls\u2019 and boys\u2019 varsity games Saturday.<\/p>\n

In just a few minutes, they raised almost $1,900. Later in the game, Conroy\u2019s husband, Michael \u201cVoice of the Wildcats\u201d Conroy, announced how much had been raised. At that point, the head referee donated the money he was\u00a0being paid that night, and another ref donated his check, too. The total came to $2,053.67, which was presented to Shay\u2019s parents.<\/p>\n

Shay, who is just 5-foot-3 and plays on the JV and varsity teams for Culbertson, went into the game after the Cowboys were well ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they put him in at the end of the game, he came in and scored right off the bat,\u201d Beth Conroy said. \u201cThe crowd literally went crazy.\u201d He ended up with four points in the 61-41 win over Circle.<\/p>\n

Portra said her son\u2019s short stature is probably related to his thyroid problems, though they didn\u2019t know that before. His doctors are talking about putting him on growth hormones.<\/p>\n

She described her son as a class clown, a bundle of energy who is friends with everybody.<\/p>\n

\u201cShay is just one of those kids that is just liked by everybody,\u201d she said. \u201cIn all the surrounding towns, everyone knows Shay.\u201d<\/p>\n

That kind of camaraderie is not unusual in the small towns of Eastern Montana.\u00a0Conroy and Machart both mentioned an incident a few years back, when two teenagers from Circle were killed in an accident while driving to Culbertson.<\/p>\n

The people of Culbertson \u201creally rallied\u201d to support the people of Circle, Conroy said, so this idea of helping Shay was an opportunity to return the favor.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur community really came to support them,\u201d Machart said of the highway deaths. \u201cYou know, in Class C, everybody\u2019s family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Details<\/strong>: To make a donation to help Shay, click right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Circle Wildcats lost to the Culbertson Cowboys in their Class C basketball game Saturday night, but what happened just before the game is what people in both towns are likely to remember for a long time to come. Eight football players from Circle went through the crowd of about 150 people, collecting donations in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[2068,960,2064,2063,2067,2066,2069,2065],"class_list":["post-5508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","tag-beth-conroy","tag-circle","tag-class-c","tag-culberton","tag-mary-machart","tag-melinda-portra","tag-michael-conroy","tag-shay-bridges","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}