By FRITZ NEIGHBOR
Daily Inter Lake | February 1, 2024 12:00 AM
This is a story about Mason Kelch and Cohen Kastelitz, first cousins who happen to lead their respective basketball teams — the Whitefish Bulldogs and Glacier Wolfpack — in scoring and rebounding.
It started a while ago, when the Hullett twins, Stacy and Rhonda, were seniors at Bigfork High School. They road-tripped to Butte to visit a friend attending Montana Tech, and one of the first people they met there was Brad Kastelitz.
“He was a freshman that played basketball and football for Tech,” Rhonda Kastelitz said this week. “It’s been 28 years now.”
Stacy and Rhonda both earned teaching degrees from the University of Montana, and Stacy came back to the Flathead Valley first, while Rhonda and Brad lived in Spokane for five years.
A third sister, Sara, had married a police officer, which made her acquainted with Bridger Kelch, another officer in Whitefish. One day Bridger ran into Sara, asked what she was doing in Whitefish and she said: Shopping for birthday presents for her sisters.
“When you’re in your 20s, your followup question is, ‘Are they single?’ “ Stacy Kelch said. “She said one isn’t, and one is.
“We met the following weekend at Moose’s.”
By 2005 Brad and Rhonda and Bridger and Stacy were all in the Valley, and on Sept. 9, 2005 Cohen Kastelitz was born. Not quite four months later, on Jan. 5, 2006, Mason Kelch made his debut.
Two more Kastelitz boys, Ethan and Hudson, followed; Mason Kelch has a sophomore sister, Camry, the same age as Ethan. A pair of instant friends grew into a pack; in fact when Mason Kelch was searching for a traveling basketball team, he ended up playing alongside Cohen Kastelitz and some other future wolves.
“At Whitefish there were never really travel ball teams,” Kelch said. “I played on the same Kalispell team, it’s called The Force, for like seven years. All those kids go to Glacier, pretty much.”
On Monday Whitefish went to Libby and led wire to wire — well, almost. The Loggers roared back in the fourth quarter and with 11 seconds left Ryan Beagle hit two free throws to put them ahead, 55-53.
Kelch, who’d already hit five 3-pointers, hit a wide-open sixth ahead of the final buzzer to give Whitefish the 56-55 win.
“He came to the bench and said, ‘If they go under (the screen), I’m going for the three,’ ” Whitefish coach Alex Gonzalez said. “He called it right away.
“We had a play in mind; we thought they were going to pressure us. He knew.”
That 27-point game, plus 18 points against Browning last week and another 20-point outing Tuesday at Columbia Falls, has raised Kelch’s scoring average to 15.4.
He’s the two-guard on a 7-5 team that is starting to find its footing. The Bulldogs led Columbia Falls — a team it looks up at in the Northwest A standings and plays again Friday — 28-21 at half.
“Last year we made the divisional tournament for the first time in a while,” Kelch said. “This year we’re still kind of under the radar.”
Kelch and Carson Gulick lead the Bulldogs in scoring, but Kelch is the sniper.
“He has a beautiful shot,” Gonzalez said. “And he doesn’t only do that. There’s games where he gets seven steals and deflections. I don’t know how he does it, but he just has a nose for the ball.
“He has that winner’s mentality, that leadership. These last few games, he’s been extremely locked in.”
Heading into Thursday’s Crosstown rematch with Flathead at the Glacier gym, Kastelitz leads Class AA in rebounding at 11.1 per game. This should surprise nobody; his work on the glass is decidedly not under the radar.
“He’s just an amazing kid to coach,” Glacier basketball mentor Mark Harkins said. “You get those kids coming around every once in a while: His commitment not just to basketball, but all the sports he plays in Glacier, is just amazing.
“Great rebounders have a knack to get to the basketball, and he has that knack. He can get through traffic to get them, and he always gets it. And It’s uncoachable. It’s just drive and natural ability.”
Meanwhile the team, mixing in three transfers, has shaken off a 1-4 start to climb into second place in the Western AA standings at 4-2. The Wolfpack are 6-5 overall.
“We’re starting to figure out how to play together,” Kastelitz, who helped Glacier finish third at last year’s State AA tournament, said. “I think we’re heading in the right direction.”
Soon, the cousins will be teammates again: Kastelitz committed to his dad’s alma mater, Montana Tech, to play receiver, in December. Not long after that Kelch followed suit.
“I’d been talking to a couple schools,” Kelch said. “I knew going in if I’d get an offer from Tech, that’s where I’d lean. Once he got in before I did, I got on and texted them.”
What’s the saying? Cousins are the friends you never knew you wanted?
“Ever since they’ve been little, both — well all of them — have always just played together,” Stacy Kelch said.
“I haven’t played with him for like six years,” Mason Kelch said. “I’m excited for that aspect of it. We’ve always had some pretty good chemistry. That should be fun.”
Of course there will be quality time spent before then. For one thing, both were selected to play in the East-West Shrine Game June 15 in Billings.
It’s funny how things work out. Like that road trip the Hullett twins took to Butte, and Rhonda saw a picture of Brad Kastelitz playing football. Where was this taken? she asked, and Brad Kastelitz answered: “Bigfork.” The Vikings beat his team 29-26 in the 1995 State B semifinals.
“You know,” Stacy Kelch remembered saying, “I think we were at that game.”