Sports

There are few places in the world where world-class waves meet unobstructed views of a temperate rainforest. For Freddie Muñoz, that’s just a small part of what makes surfing in Yakutat so special.

“It’s pretty amazing when you can be in the water and you’re surfing, and you look down, and there’s salmon that are swimming underneath you. And then there’s terns that are flying above you,” he said. “I’ve surfed in Australia, in Panama. I’ve surfed in Hawaii. I’ve been to these places — and it’s been incredible.”

Muñoz paused and pointed excitedly at a cresting wave.

“There’s sea lions right there that are surfing a wave,” he said. “See that sea lion in the wave right there on the left?”

While the scenery is breathtaking, it’s the community itself which Muñoz finds most unique.

“It’s very welcoming here,” he said. “We wanna surf with other people. We know it’s hard to surf here. You’re in colder water, the currents are really strong.”

It was snowing sporadically at the beach, and a group nearby was trying to get a fire going.

“You kind of need almost, you know, local information, local knowledge,” Muñoz said. “If you plan on getting some really good waves, you have to be able to work with other people.”

Muñoz started surfing 15 years ago after relocating to Yakutat for high school. He says he’s watched the surf community skew younger since he first started.

“It’s just really amazing to see how these kids are just, it’s so intuitive. And they just naturally are just really good at surfing,” Muñoz said. “You know, they’ve looked at the ocean as a way of putting food on their table. And now you can look at the ocean and see it as a form of play.”

The younger generation getting more involved in the surf community is due in large part to Yakutat’s annual surf camp, which will celebrate its fourth year this summer. That’s where 15-year-old Zoé Bulard first got on a board.

“I never really paid attention to surfing. I’ve never really acknowledged the waves and you know, everything about that,” she said, clicking her long acrylic fingernails together. “But I kind of had the idea in the back of my head, like ‘That would be, you know, that’d be cool. That’d be fun.’ And last summer, my auntie took me out to surf for surf camp. Like I never put on a wetsuit. I never anything until surf camp.”

Bulard says she still remembers catching her first wave.

“It was, like, the third day of surf camp. And everybody was all tired and the wetsuits were cold. And it was raining the night before. So we all weren’t feeling anything,” Bulard said.

Although learning to surf was challenging at first, Bulard says there’s nothing like the calming feeling of riding a wave.

“And it was like this big wave and everybody’s like, party wave! And like, nobody caught the wave. And I started paddling super hard. And then I was at the top of the wave, and it just felt nice,” she said.

As a kid who grew up in Yakutat, surfing fosters a deeper connection to her home town. But as an Indigenous person, it also brings her closer to the land her ancestors have been on for millennia.

“We’re tied to this land, Indigenously,” she said. “And surfing adds to that.”

Bulard says she hopes the legacy of surfing in Yakutat will continue for generations to come and open more doors for her community, but for now she’s just excited to get back to surf camp.

“I still see it as dangerous and scary,” she said. “But I also see it as a new door, you know. I see it more peaceful and more like a hug from the world.”

This past weekend Juneau had its first Native Youth Olympics competition open to the public since the pandemic.

This was the fifth year of the Traditional Games, and for many people who went, it felt a lot like the games before COVID-19. The dance group Woosh.ji.een was back for their usual opening performance, there was an audience again and more people came to compete.

Alexandria Toloff coaches a team representing the Qutekcak Native Tribe from Seward.

The team isn’t new, but it hadn’t competed in an event for a few years before COVID. The team struggled to find coaches. But then during the pandemic, Toloff’s cousin got a job as a head coach for the team and Toloff offered to help and got involved in NYO again.

“I think we were all just tired of COVID,” Toloff said. “And we wanted to get together and start doing stuff again.”

When they got the opportunity to compete at the Traditional Games in Juneau, they jumped on it. Toloff had never been to Juneau and some of her athletes had never been on a plane before.

She said Juneau felt a lot like Seward with the mountains, glacier and the water.

As for the games, Toloff competed in most of the events. Her favorite event is the scissor broad jump because it’s less stressful, but she also likes the kicking events too. 

“They really push you. Like you really have to tone in, and it really just takes like a lot of energy and force,” Toloff said. “And it is really really stressful but it takes a lot of passion and everyone gets into it.”

 A lot of athletes look forward to training for NYO and going to competitions. The events are more than just the games, Toloff said. They are also about the culture, the dancing, the food and seeing your community come together.

“Like food for the soul, I would say,” Toloff said. “Sounds a little corny, but I mean it’s like, it, like, makes my heart happy to come here.” 

When the pandemic came to Alaska and NYO events were being canceled, it was hard on the NYO community.

It was during the 2020 Traditional Games that everyone found out that the Arctic Winter Games were canceled. And it was an emotional day for the people who were supposed to go to the competition.

“These are things we look forward to all year, and never thought that it would just be canceled,” said Kyle Worl, a wellness coordinator at Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. 

Worl is also an NYO coach for athletes in Juneau and played a big role in revitalizing the sport in Southeast Alaska. He did a lot of work to keep NYO going during the pandemic. He did some practices on Zoom, and they made an NYO version of the brush challenge on TikTok. 

The virtual events were needed and it helped people get through the pandemic, but it really doesn’t compare to in-person events, Worl said. 

And a lot of people were excited to be back. Worl said this year he had the most teams ever attending the Traditional Games, and about the same amount of athletes as the event before the pandemic.

Eventually, Worl wants to have an NYO team in every Southeast community. He said he wants to give kids here the same opportunities he had with NYO in high school and share his love of the games. 

It’s rubbed off on a lot of Worl’s athletes, including Ezra Elisoff. 

“I think he is executing his goal very well because I share the same love and passion for the sport now,” Elisoff said.

Elisoff first started NYO at Thunder Mountain High School as a way to stay in shape, but he stayed because the community was so supportive of him.

A lot of the games are based on hunting and survival techniques Indigenous people in northern Alaska had. And Elisoff learned from Worl that the spirit of the games — that support you give the other athletes — is like hunting with fellow hunters in another community. People wouldn’t want other hunters to not bring home food for their families and elders. 

“That spirit is still with us, even though times aren’t that extreme,” Elisoff said. “We still like to see each other succeed and we still like to support one another because that’s what our ancestors did so long ago.”

That’s why athletes give each other advice and share techniques instead of hiding them. 

That spirit is what keeps Elisoff doing NYO.

“I actually plan on doing it until I’m like an old man and complaining about my eight keys,” Elisoff said.

There is no age limit for the World Eskimo Indian Olympics, though Elisoff said he probably doesn’t want to be doing it when he’s 90.

In the Athabaskan village of Tanana in Interior Alaska, basketball is “a way of life,” said Cynthia Erickson, who owns the local store in the Yukon River village.

But next year, it will all be different.

“There’s not going to be basketball here,” said John Erhart Jr. “This is like a basketball community.”

A junior in high school, Erhart recently played his last game with the Tanana Wolves. The team was ranked number one headed into the boys 1A state tournament championship this month. They ended up losing by four points to the Nelson Islanders, a team with players from Toksook Bay in Western Alaska.

It was the last high school basketball game Tanana will play for a long time. Four of the team’s seven players are graduating seniors this spring. And there isn’t anyone old enough to fill their spots. It will be years before there are enough kids for another team.

Tanana’s First Tribal Chief Lois Huntington said losing the team is unfortunate for the whole community. Basketball, she said, is woven into Tanana’s cultural identity. 

“After-school thing, for them to do something that keeps them from doing other things they shouldn’t be doing, is, I think, a positive for all kids,” she said. “And hopefully, you know, maybe they’ll go to a college and continue to play.”

Roughly 200 people live in Tanana, along the edge of the Yukon River, deep in the heart of Alaska’s Interior. It’s had a high school basketball team for more than 40 years. But enrollment has dropped over the decades, and this year the K-12 school has just 30 students. Tanana residents say this is the first time they can remember not having enough high schoolers for a team. After this year’s graduation, they’ll have just two high school players and an upcoming eighth grader.

The loss is felt widely. Arnold Marks grew up playing basketball in Tanana. He moved on to play in college at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Then he returned to his home village to teach high school.

“I think that, as an Alaskan Native village boy, that we grow up just loving to play basketball,” he said.

You can find the jersey he wore as a Tanana Wolf in a trophy case inside the school. His is the only jersey ever retired in Tanana.

“All our heroes are basketball players,” he said. “All of our parents and older siblings played basketball. And, you know, we don’t have enough equipment for football or baseball or anything else like that. Basketball’s it.”

Perpetual runners-up

The same trophy case that holds Marks’ jersey also holds dozens of trophies, plaques and medals marking a long legacy of success dating back to the 1970s. But one trophy that’s missing is the state championship. The Wolves have been the runner-up at least four times. So this season, going all the way seemed more urgent for the team.

“I just hope that they go out and play and enjoy themselves and take in the moment,” Marks said in Tanana, before this year’s state championship. “Because we’ve had great teams in the past that have all come up short. And even though we did, we still like, look back at it fondly and enjoy it.”

The Tanana Wolves also made it to the state championship game last year, but they were a different team in 2021.

“We got blown out by 50, and it was more than embarrassing. It was demoralizing. It felt unfair,” said coach Tanner Winters. “We didn’t know what we were up against.”

This year, he wanted the team to be better prepared, so he stacked the season with more challenging games all over the state. They played at Port Alsworth on Lake Clark. They took a ferry across Prince William Sound to Cordova. They even flew out to Sand Point in the Aleutians.

“And it was the first time, after all the traveling we’ve done,” said Winters, “I’ve seen all the guys just be like, ‘Wow, you know, we’re never going to come here again in our life.’”

Winters, who doubles as a second-year elementary school teacher in Tanana, also created a season that had an educational component for the players.

“That’s kind of another goal of mine. Scheduling all that I did was not just to go play teams that we see again, possibly, but to see Alaska,” he said.

Rebuilding community connections 

This year, the whole town pulled together to support the team’s travel and to see for themselves a group of boys that rose to the challenge. Fans held fundraisers in Tanana and in Fairbanks to make the season possible. Many also traveled alongside the team to watch the games in person. A treat after two years of the relentless coronavirus pandemic that limited the boys from being able to play and kept everyone out of the stands.

“You could tell when they were little, they always played together and they just built as a team, and the team before them was the same way.” Huntington said. “They build this thing. And that’s one thing about basketball.” Huntington said it brings the kids together as one team, on and off the court.

People in Tanana call the boys the “Magnificent Seven.”

Long after their son had gone to bed on a recent evening in Tanana, parents Christine and John Erhart Sr. stayed up in their kitchen, reminiscing about the kids and basketball as they sipped coffee and pieced a jigsaw puzzle together.

“When they were just little and, man, even in the middle of the night in the dark, they’d still be playing basketball — early in the morning. They’re playing basketball all summer, really,” said Christine Erhart.

“One night, yeah, I was like ‘where’s my boy?’ And then I went over there and I heard him, you know, playing late one night and I called [the neighbor] and he said, ‘Oh, I got the starting five over here,’ and it was just a joke back then.”

But that joke became a reality, and the boys — Savien Linnear, Isaac Morgan, Anthony Kennedy, John Erhart Jr., Fred Nicholia and Trevor Edwardsen — rose to dominate Interior Alaska’s high school basketball scene over the last few years.

A bittersweet ending

Their hard fought championship game on March 19 came down to the final few minutes, with the Wolves fighting to gain back a small lead they’d established early in the game. But with a foul within the last two minutes, a successful free throw and limited time, the Wolves simply couldn’t top the Nelson Island Islanders. They lost 51-47.

“What’s that four points? If they had one more minute, they could have done it,” said Judy Gau, grandmother to two of the boys on Tanana’s team. Her eyes welled with tears. Her voice was hoarse from days of cheering on the team throughout the state championship. Gau made it clear that while they may have lost the first place trophy, what they didn’t lose was the unwavering support of their community.

“They tried so hard, they dreamed so hard for this,” said Gau, “I am very proud, very very proud. They are the Magnificent Seven.”

After the game, parents, friends and family were already busy planning a celebration in Tanana for the boys and considering how to get another team started in the community.

“It’s hard to even imagine not having basketball, but we’ll still have the little ones. Even though it’s little kids’ games, it’s still fun to watch.” said Christine Erhart.

She said that’s how her son and the other boys on this year’s team got their start.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated where players from the Nelson Islanders team are from. They are all from Toksook Bay.

The 1,000-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race has a new champion.

Brent Sass and his 11-dog team pulled into Nome to a cheering crowd early Tuesday in temperatures around zero. Sass kicked his foot across the snow to help propel his team under the famed Burled Arch finish line at 5:38 a.m., winning the 50th running of the Iditarod.

Sass immediately walked down his line of dogs, petting each one. He got a big hug from his teary dad. He gave his dogs snacks. He said it all felt surreal.

“It’s a dream come true,” Sass said. “When I started mushing, my goal was to win the Yukon Quest and win the Iditarod and — checked them both off the list now.”

Sass’s first Iditarod victory comes on his seventh try.

Through tears, Sass described his pride in his dogs, including leaders Slater and Morello, who he’s raised since puppies.

“We’re here,” said the 42-year-old musher. “It’s crazy. It’s crazy.” Sass had fans sweating overnight as they watched the online tracker and saw him stopped twice between White Mountain and Nome, hit by a huge windstorm around the infamous Topkok Blowhole.

Five-time champ Dallas Seavey was chasing Sass, looking to become the winningest musher in race history. Seavey closed the gap as Sass stalled. But he didn’t catch up.

“It was very, very windy out there,” Sass said. “We took a tumble and went off the trail, and thought I was just gonna have to bunker down and, you know, see how the cards fell.”

But, he said, the team persevered and found the trail again.

“The only reason we got out of there is because they trusted me,” he said.

‘The old school’ 

Born and raised in Minnesota, Sass moved to Alaska more than 20 years ago to attend the University of Alaska Fairbanks and join its Nordic ski team.

Then he got sucked into dog mushing.

He said it’s something he loves to do, and something that allows him to live out his dream hauling wood and running dogs at his remote homestead in Eureka, north of Fairbanks, called Wild and Free Mushing. It’s the same area that Iditarod champions Susan Butcher and Rick Swenson once trained in.

“I think living where I live and making it an all-inclusive lifestyle. I think that’s, you know, the way it used to be, it’s kind of the way it is for me,” Sass said at White Mountain on Monday. “So maybe that’s what I represent sort of the old school, because I’m still living like Susan and Rick did back in the day.”

While this is Sass’s first Iditarod win, he’s won the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest three times, plus other mid-distance races.

He tried his first Iditarod in 2012. And he placed 13th, the best of any Iditarod newbie, winning him the Rookie of the Year award.

Sass faced problems in later Iditarods. He got disqualified from the 2015 race for carrying an iPod Touch. And the next year, he tried to keep up with Dallas Seavey and his dad, Mitch Seavey. But once they got to White Mountain, his dog team refused to leave for hours. He called it, then, the most embarrassing moment of his life.

Now, he has a tattoo that says: “Run your own race.” He said it reminds him to not get pulled into his competitors’ tactics.

“My self-discipline has gotten a lot better over the last few years,” he said before the start of this year’s Iditarod. “I’m no longer the young kid on the trail anymore, which catches up with me every now and then.”

Sass’s highest prior finish in the Iditarod came last year, when he finished third on an altered course from Willow to the ghost town of Iditarod and back — the first time the race did not finish in Nome.

Warm weather, tough trail

Sass’s victory this year comes in an Iditarod notable for warm weather, fast speeds and some tough, early sections of trail, including barren tundra and bone-jarring moguls.

This year’s Iditarod was also still marked by the coronavirus pandemic. Mushers and race officials went through a series of COVID-19 tests before and during the race. The race closed many indoor places to the public and bypassed one checkpoint completely.

Leaving the final checkpoint of Safety early Tuesday, Sass had a roughly 90-minute lead over his closest competition, Seavey.

Seavey, 35, was racing for his sixth Iditarod win. He has said he expects to take a break from racing after this year’s Iditarod to spend more time with his 12-year-old daughter, Annie.

Seavey raced into Nome in second place around 6:45 a.m. He ski poled and kicked his foot across the ground, chanting, “Good boys!”

At the finish line, he got big hugs from his family, including his daughter and grandfather, and walked down his line of dogs, greeting each one.

On Mar. 12, the state Senate Education Committee heard nearly 4 hours of public testimony on a bill that would prevent transgender girls from competing against cisgender girls in school sports. Those who showed up and called in to testify were overwhelmingly and vehemently opposed to the bill.

A transgender, or trans, person is a person who identifies with a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth. A cisgender, or cis, person does not.

This bill was written by Palmer Republican Sen. Shelley Hughes. 66 people called in or showed up in person to oppose it, while 23 called in to support it.

Opponents said the bill unfairly excludes trans girls from socializing with people of the gender they identify with. They said that can cause serious mental health outcomes for trans youth.

Jacob Bera is a cross-country running coach from Sen. Hughes’ district. He’s been a teacher and a coach for nearly 20 years.

“In the classroom and on the trails, I’ve worked hard to create an environment of inclusion. My coaching philosophy is: all abilities are welcome. Everybody races,” Bera said.

Bera says this bill will destroy that.

“I believe it will undo all those efforts. More importantly, it will further harm the mental health and well-being of those kids in schools,” Bera said.

Those who support the bill said cis girls could be prevented from winning scholarships to college. Like Alaska-born Kendall Kirby, a student at a college in Nebraska.

“If I had not had the opportunity to pursue and excel in my sport, specifically in my division as a female athlete, I would not have gained an athletic scholarship to college. Additionally, it would not have been financially feasible for me to attend college out of state,” Kirby said.

But that hasn’t happened in Alaska. As the executive director of the Alaska School Activities Association, Billy Strickland oversees high school sports in Alaska. He said a trans person has never taken away a scholarship from a cis female in Alaska. In fact, he said he only knows of one openly trans athlete in the high school sports history of the state.

Supporters and opponents of the bill also wrote the legislature via email to voice their opinions.

Some proponents of the bill also implied that they think it’s a sin to identify as trans.

“God created men and women differently. We will all one day be accountable to him and his court for our actions,” said Lisa Gentemann of Eagle River.

But Julie Smyth, who is Iñupiaq and from Fairbanks, said the bill goes against traditional Iñupiat culture.

“In my culture we choose our gender as we get older. Our names are genderless. This bill would impact people in my culture and people from around the state, as it is common in many cultures to be transgender,” Smyth said.

Apayauq Reitan is Iñupiaq and Norwegian. She’s the first openly trans athlete competing in the Iditarod. As the senate education committee was listening to public testimony, Reitan was out on the trail, racing against the best mushers in the world, of multiple genders. She weighed in during her 24 hour rest in McGrath.

“Trans women are being excluded from an entire aspect of our society. On the chance that maybe some of them have some advantages. Which is very drastic. It seems like they’re just trying to ban us out of existence,” Reitan said.

The bill must pass the education committee before it hits the senate floor. With only Sen. Tom Begich openly stating his opposition, it seems likely to be moved out of committee.

Additional reporting help from Alaska Public Media’s Jeff Chen.