Alaska State High School Basketball Championships
Of course, the big basketball tourney that’s underway is the NCAA Tournament. But right here in Alaska, we have our own little version of March madness - the State High School basketball championships. The State tourney is a ton of fun. Basketball is very big in Bush Alaska. All of the villages have high school teams - even if your high school only has 30 kids you can still field both a boys team and girls team.
Acnhorage is the host city and it’s so fun to watch all the kids come in to town. Other than basketball, their very highest priority is shopping. Today’s Daily News has a fun article on the Emmonak girls team. Those kids are shopping - big time. I also love the paragraph below - Bush villages are very close knit:
A sizable chunk of the roughly 750 people who live in the town, one of the largest on the Yukon Delta about 10 miles from the Bering Sea, made it to town for the Huskies’ first game against Buckland — as did a fair number of Emmonak expatriates.
The Daily News also has good article on the Buckland boys team and their coach who is deployed in Iraq. The article provides a good hint of village life:
When Floyd was sent off to war, the Ticket family lost the man of the house.
Their home has no running water, Eva said, so water must be pumped and sewage hauled — something Floyd used to do. Now the whole family chips in.
“I have to do the furnace work and (repair) the snowmachines, so I’m part man,” Eva said with a hardy laugh.
Floyd knew he was being deployed to Iraq about a year before he departed. But he kept it a secret from his family, Eva said.
Instead, he started to delegate responsibilities around the house so things would run smoothly in his absence.
“We didn’t know he was preparing the family for it,” Eva said.
“We don’t have (running) water and sewer. The boys have to do the pumping. They have to haul the water in 5-gallon buckets. It was quite an adjustment.”
Alaska is definitely a very different place.
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