Sports

Four Juneau ski racers have qualified to compete in the Arctic Winter Games next month, based on their results at the Alaska State Alpine Skiing Championships that just ended.

The races were held last week at Alyeska Ski Resort in Girdwood. The Alyeska Cup is the first of two state qualifying races for the United States Ski Association’s Junior Olympics for the Western Region. Juneau’s Eaglecrest Ski Area will host the second contest later this month.

The Alyeska Cup is also a qualifier for the Arctic Winter Games. Shane Kelly, Cody Weldon, Adrienne Audet and Naomi Moritz will compete at the Whitehorse games in March. Juneau Ski Club Head Coach Dan Ord says they had to make their decision now.

“It’s kind of one of those things where some athletes are holding out wanting to go to Western Region; (if they) don’t qualify and don’t get a spot to go is the worst case scenario,” Ord said. “So our athletes are quite quick to jump on the Arctic Winter Games.”

Ord says Juneau racers who have participated in previous Arctic games have done well and had a geat experience.

Ord calls the Alyeska Cup a great race series for Juneau skiers. He says they battled some tough competition from the Alyeska Ski Club, which boasts four nationally ranked skiers. The annual championship races draw 11 to 19-year olds from Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau.

It also was a week of heavy snowfall. Ord says the Super G races for some age groups were cancelled, and throughout the week races had to be postponed and rescheduled due to weather.

Ord says other Juneau’s top skiers include J-3 Gaby Hebert, J-2 Joe Greenough, and J-1 skiers Peter Peel and Matthew VanDorr.

The Eaglecrest Cup – another qualifying race for Western Region Junior Olympics – is February 18th through 20th.

Twelve Juneau ski racers are competing this week in the Alaska State Alpine Skiing Championships at Alyeska Ski Resort in Girdwood.

The Alyeska Cup is the first of two state qualifying races for the United States Ski Association’s Junior Olympics as well as the Arctic Winter Games. Juneau’s Eaglecrest Ski Area will host the second contest later this month.

Rosemarie Alexander caught up with some of the young skiers in the noisy race room at Eaglecrest Lodge.

Seventeen year-old Peter Peel has had a lot of success so far this season. He won both the Juneau Ski Club’s slalom and giant slalom at Eaglecrest last month – but it wasn’t that long ago that he was happy just to finish a race.

“Consistency is key for me,” Peel says.

The high school senior says he worked hard during the off-season and is stronger this winter.

“You know, just putting a little more into it and I’m getting more out of it, so it’s working,” he says.

One of Peel’s ski coaches might say he’s putting less into it:

“We talked to Peter about ‘instead of trying 105 percent, knock it back to 95 and see if you finish,’ and yup, Peter’s consistently finishing,” says Coach Randy Bates.

Going into the Alyeska Cup, Bates is pleased with the Juneau skiers and their competitiveness on home snow. He says Matt Van Door is also skiing strong.

“He’s always finished races and he’s having consistent results, too. He and Peter are battling pretty good,” Bates says.

Van Dorr and Peel are the oldest junior skiers to represent Juneau. Racers ages 11 to 19 are competing at Alyeska from Juneau, Anchorage, Girdwood and Fairbanks.

Last year, Joe Greenough, of Juneau, finished first in slalom at the Alyeska Cup. He says it might be a little far-fetched, but he’s hoping to do it again.

“That would make my year, right there,” he says.

Slalom is the 15-year-old’s favorite event. “It’s just technical, it’s fast, it’s fun,” Greenough says. “You can be on the edge and still make it.”

Thirteen-year-old Gaby Hebert says she prefers giant slalom, “because you don’t have to think as much as slalom. Slalom has more gates and more turns.”

Like most of the Juneau ski team, Hebert learned the fundamentals of ski racing in Mitey Mites, for kids ages 7 to 12.

Fourteen-year-old Adrienne Audet also came up through Mitey Mites and the Development, or DeVo Team. She says she’s committed to the sport of alpine racing and has adopted Giant Slalom as her event. But Audet crashed in a recent GS race at Eaglecrest and admits she’s a little concerned as the Alyeska races begin.

“It’s actually my favorite race. But I just hope I can finish,” she says.

Bates isn’t concerned. He says the Juneau racers are prepped and ready to ski the technical and speed events, including Super G. That race is Wednesday morning.

“What an incredible year for us. The kids have had great snow. We’ve been able to get courses set. The grooming’s been impeccable from Eaglecrest,” Bates says. “There’s no shortage of gate time this year.”

The Alyeska Cup has new meaning for assistant coach Patrick Shanley. He’s now 25, and grew up racing as an Eaglecrest Race Rat, Mitey Mite, DeVo and junior.

“I’ve not been back to Alyeska since I had the big crash in 2005, when I broke my back,” Shanley says. “So I’m looking forward to standing on the top of Silver Tip again and skiing down it nice and easy and making it through without crashing.”

This is Shanley’s first year coaching; he calls it rewarding to see the young racers improve, get stronger and faster.

Ski instructor Nancy Peel says she’s relieved that son Peter’s racing is more consistent and he’s finishing races with good results. But she admits she can’t watch.

“It makes me nervous sometimes. I can’t watch the speed events, and that’s the truth,” Peel laughs. “I close my eyes.”

The Alyeska Cup continues through Sunday. Then the Anchorage, Girdwood and Fairbanks skiers come to Juneau for the Eaglecrest Cup, February 18 through 20.

The Juneau Ski Club’s youth racing program is in its 77th year.

Team Alaska left Team Oregon scoreless in the second annual Tanoa Bowl over the New Year’s weekend.

The football bowl game started in late 2010, designed to showcase high school players in Washington and Alaska and introduce them to college football coaches. This year the bowl game expanded to include teams from Oregon and Utah.

It was played on New Year’s Eve at Auburn Memorial Stadium, south of Seattle. Alaska beat Oregon 40-0, to a crowd of family, friends, and college football recruiters, mostly from division two and division three schools.

Team Alaska head coach Numi Ilalio says many college coaches don’t pay much attention to Alaska high school football teams.

Ilalio coaches at Service High School in Anchorage. The Alaska football season ends in early October, a month earlier than the Lower 48. It took dedication, and money, for some of the players selected to get to Anchorage for practice, but kids from Juneau, the MatSu and Anchorage managed to practice 18 days before the big game.

Thirty-seven players – sophomores, juniors, and seniors — from the Cook Inlet and Railbelt conferences were hand-picked, based on what Ilalio calls the Three-A’s, utilized by college athletic recruiters.

“The first A is Academic,” Ilalio says. “They have to have the academics, otherwise it would be useless for them to be on this team and not be able to qualify to go to college.”

The second A is Attitude. Ilalio says recruiters are looking for a good attitude and dedication to the sport, because the university will be making an investment in each player they select.

“The one thing that college coaches told me a long time ago is you have to put yourself in their shoes,” he says, “and ask yourself ‘am I going to put my life, my paycheck on the line for an 18-year-old kid, when I don’t know if he has the character, the ability and the academics to play?’ ”

The third A is Ability to play at the college level.

“I looked at the best players in the state of Alaska who made the All-Conference, made the All-State list and then selected from there,” Ilalio says.

Three were Juneau-Douglas Crimson Bears – Quarterback Phillip Fenumiai, linebacker Lah Fafita and Enele “Bubbles” Velopoto. Three players came from Wasilla and the rest from eight Anchorage-area high schools.

Each player goes to the Tanoa Bowl with a file on their high school football career, academic transcripts and a DVD of their play.

Fenumiai was one of three quarterbacks on the team, along with Conor Feckley from West High School and Zach Lujan from South.

“Right from the get-go we set the tempo with a big hit from one of our safeties on kick off,” Fenumiai says. “From there we just put the pedal to the metal and just let everything loose and we just had control over the whole game.”

Then they got to watch Team Utah beat Team Washington, 45-24.

“Utah had a very good team. We scrimmaged them and they had a lot of good athletes on their team,” Fenumiai says.

After the games, Tanoa Bowl staff – separate from the teams’ coaching staff – selected MVPs for each team.

Fenumiai was the offensive player of the game and Matthew Ilialio of Service was most valuable player for Team Alaska.

The Tanao Bowl has Polynesian roots, but being Polynesian is not a criteria for selection to the teams. Ilalio, who is Samoan, says it symbolizes the importance of family, culture and team. The players do not have to be Polynesian

“To come together as a football family and help get these kids noticed and recruited by colleges,” he says.

In addition to Ilalio, the coaching roster was sort of a who’s who of coaches for large Alaska high schools, including Chugiak head coach Duncan Shackelford, West High School head coach Tim Davis as well as South quarterback coach Gabby Lujan and Juneau-Douglas Crimson Bears Defensive Coordinator Al Fenumiai – 10 coaches in all.

The football recruiting program is part of the Alaska Athletic Alliance. For more information, go to alaskaalthelticalliance.org.

Six teams with some strange names are the champions of Juneau’s 19^th Holiday Cup soccer tournament, which ended Saturday.

The youngest players — the Reindeer Rampage – won the elementary school division, the Swaggalicious took the middle school spot, junior and senior winners are the Purple Cobras and Wolf Pack, while the Hot Cocoas and Crunch Enhancers won the adult divisions. 

The coed indoor soccer tournament has become a tradition for soccer enthusiasts during Juneau’s holiday school break.  KTOO intern Alice Ottoson-McKeen reports.

A Juneau-based Coast Guard officer has been named the service’s Elite Female Athlete of the Year.

Lieutenant Nicole Auth received the honor for helping the U.S. sailing team win the bronze medal at the 5th Military World Games held earlier this year in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The team was made up of service women from the Navy, Coast Guard and Marine Corp.

Auth works in the Coast Guard’s 17th District Prevention and Investigations office in Juneau.

Each year, the Coast Guard selects elite male and female athletes who make a significant contribution in a team sport, and have a positive impact in their community.

Auth volunteered to teach sailing to high school students while stationed in Hawaii. She herself has been sailing since high school, and was on the Coast Guard Academy sailing team before graduating in 2004.

It was a busy weekend for local high school sports as precious medals were procured, champions were crowned and a team swept into action.

SWIMMING:

In the pool, Juneau-Douglas High School finished fourth at Saturday’s ASAA/First National Bank Alaska Swimming & Diving State Championships in Anchorage.

Nathan Messing stroked his way to two gold medals in the 100 butterfly and 100 yard backstroke and Haley Mertz, Dakota Isaak, Auri Clark and Ciera Kelly earned silver medals in the 200 medley relay for the Crimson Bears.

VOLLEYBALL:

The ASAA Region Five Volleyball champions were crowned on Saturday at JDHS.

The double elimination tournament started on Thursday as the Ketchikan Lady Kings grounded the TMHS Falcons in a thrilling five game match winning by scores of 25-20, 25-16, 16-25, 20-25, and 15-13. After a loss on Friday to JDHS the Lady Kings downed Thunder Mountain High School in an elimination match, winning 25-21, 16-25, 25-10, 25-21.

In the finals, the JDHS Crimson Bears stonewalled “Kayhi” enroute to the Large School 4A championship by scores of 25-6, 25-5 and 25-18.

JDHS Crimson Bears Krista Bontrager, Carly Gunnersen, and Chelsea Peterson were named to the 4A all-tournament team. Other selections included Ketchikan’s Jayley Taylor and Thunder Mountain High School’s Kylie Ibias and Kendra Wittwer.

In the 3A small schools division the top seeded Mt. Edgecumbe Lady Braves triumphed over Petersburg High School, winning the championship match in four games by a score of 25-14, 25-15, 22-25 and 25-19.

JDHS, Mt. Edgecumbe and Petersburg will travel to the state tournament to be held November 10th through 12th in Wasilla.

HOCKEY:

The Juneau Douglas High School Hockey team opened its 2011-2012 season at Treadwell Arena with a sweep of a two game series against the Delta Junction Huskies.

Freshman Jonathan Weston and Junior Tod Baseden netted hat tricks on Friday night as JDHS iced Delta Junction. Senior Center and Captain Bill Holbrook had four assists. Junior goalie Colter Pritchard stopped 27 shots in the 11-6 victory over the Huskies.

On Saturday, JDHS dumped Delta Junction by a score of 7-3. The Crimson Bears doubled up against the Huskies, taking 33 shots and limiting them to 16 attempts on goal. Juneau Goalie Griffin Bozarth had 13 saves.

JDHS will look to stay unbeaten as it hosts East Anchorage High School on Thursday at 7:00 p.m. and Friday at 8:00 p.m. Both games will be played at Treadwell Arena in Juneau.