Sports

For the first time in nearly 20 years, the small island community of Mekoryuk has enough players to field a high school basketball team. Two girls and five boys play on a co-ed team in a season that has gone quite well.

In their first game this year, Mekoryuk played against Tununak, a nearby village. Fifteen-year-old power forward Harvey Wesley said that he had butterflies going into the game.

“I was super-very nervous,” Wesley said. “Because it was my first game, and I was nervous and I was scared.”

At the same time, he said that he was equally excited, “because every time I looked at that scoreboard I was like ‘oh my gosh I think we’re gonna win.’”

And they did. Mekoryuk won that first game and half of their games this season. That’s good enough to advance them to the small school district tournament, the 1A Coastal Conference Tournament, which begins on March 3 in Bethel. If they win that, they’ll advance to the state tournament.

Wesley said that this season hasn’t just been about winning, though. It’s also been about the relationships he’s built with his teammates.

“Me and my friends got more closer, and we’ve been talking to each other for basketball and saying ‘Hey, I think if we do this way, this would be more better,’” Wesley said.

Plus, he said that being part of the team has made him more engaged in school.

“Before I ever joined the basketball team, I always seen school as, like, ‘Oh, I got a long day at school.’ And then ever since I joined basketball, I’m like, ‘Oh, yes, I can get all my assignments done and then I can be in a basketball practice,’” Wesley said.

Wesley is one of just seven players on the team. The co-ed team plays against boys teams from other schools. Coach Edward Kiokun said that the two girls both start, which is unique to Mekoryuk.

“There’s no other co-ed team that I know of right now,” Kiokun said.

Kiokun said that the reason the girls and boys are on the same team, and the reason Mekoryuk hasn’t had a team in nearly 20 years, is that there just aren’t that many students there.

“We’re a small community. On a good day, it’s 200 people. And, you know, we have about 45 kids in the whole school, preschool through 12,” Kiokun said.

This year, there were finally enough high school students to field a basketball team. Wesley, the sophomore, said that he’d been waiting for this day for a long time.

“I was so excited, because I’ve been asking my principal ‘Hey do you think there will be a basketball season this year.’ Or ‘When can we get a basketball thing going?’” Wesley said.

Kiokun said that there are students who are from Mekoryuk attending boarding schools like Mt. Edgecumbe in Sitka this year. But he said that they’ve heard about the basketball team in Mekoryuk, and some are wanting to come back. He said that he’s hoping to have both a boys team and a girls team next year.

Many of the top dog teams in this year’s Iditarod are racing with proven pedigrees from the past championship teams. They come from the hallowed bloodlines of legendary kennels like the ones run by mushers Jeff King, Dick Mackey and Rick Swenson.

Then there’s 7-year-old Zeke.

Zeke is one of two dogs in 29-year-old rookie musher Kailyn Davis’ team who she adopted from the Fairbanks animal shelter. Now, he’s racing the Iditarod with her in just over a week.

Zeke’s life has changed a lot since Davis first spotted him six years ago.

At the time, she was gearing up for a skijor race in Fairbanks. But it was so cold, she needed a jacket for one of her dogs. She went into a pet store, and spotted a hairless and scabby Alaskan husky.

Here’s how Davis describes what happened next.

This transcript was lightly edited for length and clarity. 

Kailyn Davis: I walk into Cold Spot and there’s this dog who’s kind of just sickly, naked – he just has like tufts of fur. It’s scabby and gross. I was just wondering: What’s wrong with that dog? Usually I’m not the type of person that talks to people in public, but for whatever reason, I needed to figure out what’s going on with this dog.

I started talking to the lady who had him there. Her name is Nicole Silvers, and she does a lot of fostering through the Fairbanks shelter.

The next day, I get off the Tanana River challenge, I go straight to the shelter and met Nicole there with him and adopted Zeke.

Basically, the whole issue with his skin was a stress reaction.

The vets were not sure if he was gonna recover from that because it was such a large area affected. The vets have tried a few medications and it wasn’t really working. And so they’re just like, “Okay, well switch them again, switch them again,” but nothing was really working.

Vets weren’t confident he was necessarily going to survive. They said, ‘Well, there’s one more medication we can try. We’ll give it a shot and see if it works.’

On top of that I was giving him Benadryl for his itchiness. I was giving him like fish oil and salmon oil and eggs and all this stuff to try and like just help his skin.

The vets were able to order a special kind of mousse instead of a shampoo where I could just sponge him and then put this mousse on his skin and then wipe it off. So he was getting these kind of weird, dry cabin sink baths for quite a while. And he hated that.

I’d take him to work with me and he’d sit in the car. And it was like, you could smell his skin kind of like dying. It was really gross. It’s like just this decaying, rotting kind of flesh smell. It was really gross.

To kind of help him we started going on walks and he liked being outside. And he liked doing that.

I noticed that after he had run, he was less anxious, he wasn’t as itchy, he was a lot more comfortable and could actually like relax and sleep a little bit. So we just kept that up and kept going on more, and more and more runs. And he started growing more hair back.

I started training with musher Al Eischens down in Wasilla. And we were gonna do a couple of qualifiers for Iditarod and so I ran dogs with him on the weekends.

We’re standing around after the Copper Basin 300. That was my last race of that season and 2016 and Al was running Iditarod that year. And he asked, “Hey, does Zeke want to go to the Iditarod?”

At that point, Copper Basin finished in January. So it was in another month and a half. And I was like, “I don’t know, do you think he can go on?”

I almost said no, because I was selfish. I thought “no” because that means he has to go train in Wasilla for the next month and a half. And I don’t want to leave him, you know.

Zeke started Iditarod but I didn’t even buy my Nome tickets for the longest time because while I wanted to see Zeke finish – I didn’t think he’s gonna finish.

And then like Zeke’s getting farther and farther in the race. Finally, I bought a ticket, got to Nome and we had some friends drive us out to see the teams coming across the sea ice before they got into town.

I was just trying not to cry: I was just thinking: “Oh, my gosh, it’s my Zeke!”

Zeke made it the whole way, came across the finish line, was still excited and wanted to keep going. Like, this is insane.

I wasn’t sure if he’d run Iditarod with me this year. He’s just been a house dog for the last couple years. And I don’t know if he really wants to, like, train that intensely again. It wasn’t a question of whether he wanted to run, but I didn’t know if he wanted to do Iditarod.

I threw him in the team because otherwise he was just sitting at home screaming if he got left behind. And he did not like that. So started just letting him come along. And Zekejust kept coming along the whole season. He’s been amazing.

I’m planning to have him be in lead — at least the ceremonial start.

Volunteers and race officials at the 2022 Iditarod Sled Dog Race will be tested daily for COVID-19 and must prove they are fully vaccinated to be in the Iditarod bubble.

Those rules and others were announced as part of the latest COVID prevention plan for the 1,000-mile sled dog race that starts in just under two weeks.

Mushers will also have to prove they are fully vaccinated and will have to test negative for COVID three times before the start of the race, plus another time at the checkpoint in McGrath — about a third of the way into the competition.

Race marshal Mark Nordman said he’s confident the plan will help keep mushers and communities along the route safe.

“I don’t think you could find a better plan,” he said in an interview last week.

Race officials and volunteers will wear armbands and ID badges to show that they are part of the Iditarod bubble at checkpoints along the trail, according to the race’s 25-page COVID prevention plan.

Those inside the bubble are required to wear face masks when interacting with people outside of the bubble. Mushers should wear masks too, according to the COVID-19 plan.

Nordman said the Iditarod developed the plan with Dr. Jodie Guest, an infectious diseases epidemiologist and professor at Emory University. Guest is also a longtime Iditarod volunteer who helped craft last year’s protocols too.

Some communities along the race trail have taken additional measures to prevent COVID from spreading.

The community of Takotna, famous for its spread of pies for mushers, decided to not be a checkpoint this year. Instead teams will run 41 miles from McGrath straight to Ophir.

White Mountain’s checkpoint will also look different. This year, the checkpoint will be in a heated tent on the river, instead of closer to town. Teams still must take an eight-hour rest there before their final 77-mile sprint to Nome.

Nordman said on Friday that trail breakers on snowmachines reported good conditions during their run through the Alaska Range.

“They were very pleased: Not a lot of bridges to build, good snow in Rohn,” he said “We were really light on snow a week ago around Nikolai — they’ve got over close to 2 feet now. So it looks like we got a great trail all the way to Nome.”

The 50th running of the Iditarod starts with the ceremonial start on Saturday, March 5, in downtown Anchorage. Race officials say fans can attend in person but are asked to wear masks. There are 49 teams currently signed up to race, including last year’s top three finishers.

Basketball is a huge part of life in rural Alaska. But the COVID-19 pandemic means that in Bristol Bay, teams haven’t been able to play against each other since 2020.

That changed at the end of January, when Dillingham held the region’s first major high school basketball tournament. But one of the schools wasn’t able to fly to Dillingham, so the athletes took matters into their own hands.

The Sockeye Classic basketball tournament in Dillingham was the Togiak Huskies’ first competition since the pandemic began two years ago. And they really wanted to play.

“They were excited to come here and play. And I have two seniors. And it’s their last year,” said Ina Togiak, the coach for the girls team.

Togiak said the school shut down when the pandemic hit, so it was hard for the students to practice, let alone compete.

Now, games are back. But students still face obstacles when traveling to competitions.

Most Bristol Bay communities aren’t connected by roads, and students fly to other schools for sports competitions. The first day of the Sockeye tournament in January was cold and extremely windy, and no planes were flying to Togiak.

So the coaches and the school came up with a plan: Take 10 student athletes, coaches and chaperones across at least 70 to 80 miles of frozen tundra, streams and lakes to the tournament — on snowmachines.

Thomas Dock coaches the Togiak boys’ team. He said they had discussed traveling by snowmachine for games in the past, to no avail. But this time, parents and coaches met with school officials and agreed that the team should make the journey.

Once the superintendent approved the trip, it took the team just an hour to get ready. They had survival equipment and gear and help from guides, including members of Togiak’s search and rescue team.

Senior Koby Pauk said the ride was tough.

“Long, backbreaking,” he laughed. “Never thought I’d get tired of riding a snowgo.”

“And scary,” said sophomore Lloyd Kritz.

They expected the route to take four hours. But the snow was rock hard, and the wind ripped across the tundra.

“It was awesome — in the beginning. We had 10 snowgos, but one broke down,” said Dock. “It was a beautiful trip, we were going in the rate that we were going, but some snowmachines — it’s glare ice — some snowmachines are liquid cooled. They had overheating problems.”

The trip took six hours instead of four.

Dock said the team arrived too late to compete on the first day of the tournament. They played their first game the next morning.

“It’s really nice to hear people say that everybody in the southwest region parts of Alaska knew Togiak was coming by snowmachine to Dillingham to play basketball,” he said. “That was awesome and we were greeted really well here.”

Senior Alyssa Coopchiak has played basketball for eight years. She said it was hard not to compete during the pandemic.

“It was kind of depressing, because we couldn’t travel anymore,” she said.

It was her first trip to Dillingham by snowmachine. She said it’s exciting to compete again. The team — and coaches — were excited for the rest of the tournament

“We’re going to win the whole thing,” Coach Dock joked. “We’re just shaking ourselves off, relaxing.”

Sophomore Shantae Kamkahpak and junior Natania Hyexikok were in the stands during one of the games the day after they arrived. They have both played basketball for years.

They said the ride to the tournament was tough, but fun. It was their first long trip on snowmachines.

“It was a lot of fun,” Kamkahpak said. “It was pretty warm. I dressed really warm. I had like two coats and two snow pants.”

“But when the sun was setting it got colder and windier,” said Hyexikok.

“I sat in the sled for part of it,” Hyexikok “My head was just bouncing, and it was just… not great.”

“The jumps on the snowgo. When you’re a passenger when you’re holding on it feels like you’re going to freaking tip, and crash,” Hyexikok said. “Our legs would get so sore we would have to stretch.”

“It was fun,” Kamkahpak said.

“Even if we’re sore,” Hyexikok said. “I really wanted to come here.”

Later on in the tournament, the team gathered outside the Dillingham boardinghouse where they were staying.

Alvaro Sutton is one of the parents who traveled with the team. He said when one of the machines broke down during the trip over, they figured it out.

“We lost a spring and it tore the track,” he said. “We had to make do with what we had — packed a couple of kids on some sleds and we just came on over.”

Most of the players flew home. But a few had to help get the snowmachines back to Togiak.

“I’m probably going to take my daughter with me and we’re just going to go straight back home. She wants to follow me,” Sutton said on the last day of the tournament.

Neither the boys nor the girls placed in the finals. Togiak’s girls team won the tournament’s sportsmanship award. And, the athletes said, the long trip there was definitely worth it.

For the rapidly decreasing number of Americans who’ve never heard of pickleball, the obscure paddleball game is one of America’s fastest-growing sports.

Invented in 1965 by three middle-aged fathers in Washington state, pickleball is a quirky cross among tennis, pingpong and badminton, played with a paddle and a perforated plastic ball. The founders are said to have named the game after a family dog called Pickles.

With 4.8 million people now playing — almost double the number from just five years ago, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association — some of the sport’s devotees are capitalizing on pickleball’s spike in popularity.

The game now has two national professional tournaments, both formed in the last four years, and pickleball organizers are courting corporate sponsors to help grow the sport in the U.S. and abroad as part of a bid for Olympic inclusion.

“We’re still small and scrappy, but we’re not so innocent anymore,” said Stu Upson, who was hired in late 2020 as the first CEO of USA Pickleball, the sport’s official governing body. The organization was formed in 2005 to set rules and promote the sport.

Upson believes pickleball can keep growing without losing the accessibility that’s fueled its rise over the last decade.

“People are looking for avenues to have some fun, get some exercise, but do it in an environment that’s not divisive,” he said. “That’s a pretty important thing in our society today I believe.”

An ‘addictive’ game that won’t stop growing

Most of pickleball’s core players — those who play more than eight times per year — are over age 65, but the game is getting younger, with the strongest growth among players under 55, according to USA Pickleball.

But with so many new players, the U.S. is struggling to keep up with demand for courts.

The country has only about 10,000 places to play, by USA Pickleball’s count, but that continues to grow by several dozen every month. Sports clubs and hotel groups, including Marriott and Omni Resorts, are converting tennis courts to or building new courts for pickleball, while a restaurant chain called Chicken N’ Pickle that has locations in four states has said it will double its footprint within the next year.

Municipalities nationwide are trying to meet the demand for pickleball venue — so many that USA Pickleball is putting together a toolkit for community planners with guidelines and cost estimates for building courts, which can range from $300 for a temporary net, equipment and tape to mark lines, to $30,000 for a permanent court.

In Meredith, New Hampshire, the town’s Parks and Recreation Department offers indoor pickleball in a multipurpose gym that’s also used for basketball, tennis and other sports.

The program is capped at about 50 people with dozens on the waiting list, and some pickleball players got so serious that their sessions are now supervised and players are separated by skill level.

“It’s addictive so we just started playing and now with our other friends and relatives — actually everybody we know now plays pickleball,” said Freida Yueh, who joined the Meredith program with her husband two years ago after they retired in the area.

This spring, the couple is traveling with two others to a pickleball training camp in North Carolina.

“It’s going to be six days of intense video instruction and games,” Yueh added. “I’m hoping that I learn just one skill that improves my game.”

Pickleball is going from amateur to pro

Pickleball is proving attractive to a wide range of corporate sponsors as the sport seeks new sources of revenue. USA Pickleball has two dozen brand partners, including gear makers, an online health care market and a CBD (cannabidiol) company.

“We have people who understand the sports business, not just the pickleball business,” said Upson. “Is the revenue that’s coming in important? It’s critical for us to reinvest in the sport and grow, but it’s not going to drive us.”

Pickleball is also fast becoming a spectator sport. Its first professional tournament, the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) Tour, formed in 2018 and was recently acquired by the owner of the Carolina Hurricanes National Hockey League team. USA Pickleball sanctioned a second pro tour that started a year later, launched by the Association of Pickleball Professionals.

Both events boast hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize payouts that are minting the first generation of pickleball players who can make a living at the game.

“Professional players are being able to really become celebrities and spotlights, people that are recognizable in the world,” said Connor Pardoe, commissioner of the PPA Tour, whose players sign three-year exclusive contracts. “The reason we do that, one, is to make sure the best people are at our events and, two, to really protect our investment.”

Traditional broadcasters’ interest in the sport is growing. So far, pickleball fans can watch amateur and professional matches on sports or social channels, mostly online.

“The ability for a sport to find an audience quickly via social media is unprecedented,” said Ben Shields, who lectures at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and studies the sports industry.

“Think about all of the new digital experiences that are available to sports leagues to connect with fans — streaming games in an interactive way, fantasy pickleball, which brings fans in on a different level, all the social media conversations and experiences you can create around the sport.”

Shields added that pickleball still needs a transcendent star to draw in wider audiences, as has been the key to success for other sports leagues — that also started with grassroots and unusual names.

“I think if pickleball, in its own humble way, can continue to grow its participation and find ways to make the sport a compelling fan product, who knows, 10, 20 years, it could be a very viable competitor in the global sports industry.”

A successful Olympic bid might accelerate that time frame. To mount one, pickleball needs competitive players in at least 75 countries. So far, the International Federation of Pickleball has at least 70 member nations and most of them joined in the past three years.

Organizers are aiming for inclusion in the 2028 Olympics as a demonstration sport. For now, pickleball’s fans are just happy that more players are finding their way to a sport that brings people together.

“A lot of people are getting in because they love the game,” said Upson of USA Pickleball. “It’s all over the place in a good way.”

One of Alaska’s most beloved athletes, Olympic champion cross-country skier Kikkan Randall, is participating in this year’s Winter Olympics — not as a competitor but as a commentator for NBC, covering the Beijing games from NBC’s studios in Connecticut.

Randall is helping analyze the events for TV viewers nationwide and stoking the competitive fire for young and old skiers alike.

Randall says after competing in the previous five Winter Olympic Games, this year has been a unique experience, especially with a focus on the up-and-coming, relatively young U.S. ski team.

Listen here:

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Kikkan Randall: It’s been really interesting to watch this Olympics from the other side of the screen. This is the first time in five editions I haven’t been a part of the team myself. So it’s been unique to take my experience and then now watch the U.S. team, watch the U.S. athletes. And what I’ve noticed is just the shift in expectation, the shift in professionalism.

This team coming in, I think, had probably the highest expectations the team has ever had, mostly on the shoulders of Jessie Diggins, who comes in as an Olympic medalist already but also could contend theoretically in all six events. But then, also, this young team that has shown some of the best results at the World Junior Championships and their first couple years in the World Cup — a lot of hope pinned on them but a hard position to be in, given that they really are so young in the sport.

So, you know, I think the Olympics, the way it’s unfolded in the first week, has really shown why the Olympics is so challenging. It’s when the world is trying to be at their absolute best. And you see those countries that just have so much tradition, and so much resource and such a depth of team, can really come in and perform. And I think the U.S. team, while they have made so many strides, they’re still really developing in terms of the depth and bringing the resources up to speed.

The conditions have been pretty challenging. There’s been the altitude factor, there’s been the snow conditions. And you’ve got to give the credit to these athletes. This games has been intense on a whole ‘nother level because of all the COVID issues. And so the fact that they’ve all come in, they’ve kept a good perspective, they’ve all laid their best effort out, they’ve all been super honest about how they’re feeling and giving their best.

And I think while we haven’t had as many, you know, a ton of metals, I think it’s been a really successful games so far. And I think now that we’re halfway through the games, the athletes could still really be kind of figuring things out and could finish the games strong.

Casey Grove: I think it’s safe to say that they’ve been successful with their outfits at least, right? With the stripy, red, white and blue outfits that I think you sort of pioneered, right?

Kikkan Randall: I think the suits do look fantastic. I love that when they’re in the field, you can see where the American team is. And so, really cool to see that out there. And as a commentator, I can tell you, it’s really helpful, because all those suits start to blend together. And when you can really talk to what the Americans are doing in the group, it’s really helpful.

Casey Grove: Yeah, no doubt, as a spectator too. Tell me more about that. Because the way this works is, you’ve got to watch some monitors really closely to be able to talk about what’s going on in the race. Has that been challenging, I guess, being remote? And would you, without COVID, would you have normally been at the games?

Kikkan Randall: I think it’s been a mixed bag for commentators over the last two Olympic cycles. I believe in Sochi, the commentators were on-site. And then for Pyeongchang, Chad Salmela and Steve Schlanger, who I’m commentating with here, who called the gold medal race, they were calling it from Connecticut here.

I mean, I’m appreciating now what it takes to produce the Olympic Games, across the myriad of sports and all the roles it takes. So I can appreciate why it’s just a little bit more effective to do from the studios here, where the infrastructure is in place. To be honest, I think if I was at the venue, I would still be staring at a screen, probably not un-different to what I’m doing now. The benefit of being on-site would be the chance to interact more with the teams and with the athletes.

But in terms of just here, being able to do the job, I’ve got two screens in front of me, I’ve got the split times, I’ve got a device called the Hawkeye that’s feeding the information from our research team. I’ve got papers spread out all over the desk of former results, and you know, bios and various things. So it’s really a cool setup to really be able to simultaneously be working through what happened in the past, who are these athletes, what’s going on in the snow. And then also, I’m looking through Plexiglas to my other two commentators, and we’re playing off each other in this kind of intricate dance of all each playing our role. So it’s just been a fantastic, really fun experience.

Casey Grove: For you personally, having been on the team, you won a gold medal in the last Olympics. What’s it like now, sort of from the other side, like looking at it as a commentator? How does that feel?

Kikkan Randall: I was really curious to see what kind of feelings, emotions, thoughts I would have, being on this side of the screen for the first time in a long time. I think being able to end my career on the highest of high notes, to be able to leave my career feeling like I did everything I wanted to do, really left me feeling content to move on to this next chapter of my life. And so to come back four years later, and watch the sport now, I am just so grateful that I just have a genuine love of the sport.

I find myself intrigued about what’s going to happen. And I love really thinking critically now about what’s going on up there — you know, is the wax playing a factor? What have the athletes done for training? How are they playing out tactics? I just gets me excited.

And I’ve loved that after 20 years, when I could have easily been like, “Alright, well, that was very intense, I’m going to go do something totally different. I have no interest in skiing,” I’m the opposite. I’m still a super fan. I love being able to see what’s happened in the four years that I’ve been gone, and to see the team doing so well. And to see the athletes, the rookies, coming into their first Olympics, for the veterans, you know, doing a good job performing under pressure. And it’s just been really good.

And I really can’t have done it in a better way. The competitor in me, you know, I’m seeing the sprint course and going, “Oh, that would have played my strengths. You know, that would have been really fun.” But I don’t really regret my decision to finish my career four years ago.

Casey Grove: There’s a lot of ways to sort of measure success, and there’s a lot of different victories happening out there. But I wanted to ask you, in particular, about Hannah Halvorsen and the long journey it’s been for her to make it to the Olympics.

Kikkan Randall: Hannah’s story is incredibly inspiring. And as her former teammate, I’m just incredibly proud to see her journey back from that horrific accident two years ago, where, I mean, her life was in jeopardy.

She was casually crossing the street in downtown Anchorage, you know, a place I’ve lived almost my entire life. Her training had really just been clicking, like, hitting stride. I think everybody was looking forward to that season to see how she would do. And bam, in an instant, she was hit by a car, you know, thrown down the street, traumatic brain injury, horrific injury to her legs. And that could have been the end of her career right there.

But Hannah just has always been such a wise soul. And she she just took it in stride. I mean, I know there were difficult moments. But in her mind, it was never a question of whether or not she was going to come back. And she just had the patience. She surrounded herself with great support, to recover from her injuries and I think has gradually worked her way back. And in just two years, to be named the Olympic team to come in, you know, she got a top 10 in a World Cup earlier this season. She just comes in, and I really hope for her that she’s really been able to soak in all that is the Olympic experience, because it’s hard not to get to the games and then feel like you want to, like you need to win a medal to be successful.

But for her, her medal is to be there. And I mean, she is a strong representative of Team USA. And I think she still has a bright future ahead. Like really, at her age, the next four years I think are going to be when her her career could really hit its stride. So to get this experience now, to get that kind of reward for the comeback she’s made, it’s just absolutely inspiring. And Hannah’s the nicest, sweetest person ever, such a competitor, and yet just such a wonderful complement to the team. So it’s been wonderful to see the story play out.

Casey Grove: Yeah. Well, what are you looking for in the races here coming up this week?

Kikkan Randall: Well, the team sprint is the next race on the calendar. And that is always a great event for the sport of cross-country. It receives some of the biggest viewing numbers. You know, personally, I think it’s one of the most exciting races because it’s two athletes. It’s generally kind of a combination of the sprint speed with the endurance capacity. So a lot can happen over each of the three legs for each skier. Jessie and I won the gold medal in 2018 in this event, however, that was in the freestyle technique. So now we switch back to classic. Traditionally, the U.S. team has not been as strong at classic, although we do have a silver medal from 2017, when Jessie Diggins and Sadie Bjornsen teamed up. So I think that provides a lot of confidence that when the team gets the skis right, when the athletes are in a good place, the U.S. can absolutely contend for a medal. And as we know, we’re a day away from the event as we look into it. Sweden will no doubt have a strong team. The Russian Olympic Committee will have a strong team. Finland will have strong team. But the U.S. can argue that they all have a strong team. So really looking forward to that in the women’s race.

I think in the men’s race for the U.S. team, probably not a medal contender, but a great opportunity to put maybe a couple of the younger guys in there to gain experience. And then in terms of the fight for the medals, I think it’s going to be really intriguing. You know, Norway’s is feeling a little bit wounded right now because the Russian Olympic Committee has certainly dominated these championships, so they’re going to be looking for some redemption. But R.O.C. will definitely be the team to beat. And you know, I think Finland can make a play in there. Italy’s looking strong. So it’s just going to be so exciting. And I think as a fan, as a commentator, the most you want is to come in with really competitive events where you’re like, “I don’t know who’s gonna win.” And that’s kind of how I feel coming into this. And I think in the women’s U.S. team is definitely kind of the underdog. And that was the position we were in four years ago. So I just can’t wait.

Casey Grove: Yeah, it definitely is super exciting, and so many different storylines going on. Well, Kikkan, as the executive director of Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage, and an Anchorage skier that people see around here, I wonder, what do you think this means for kids growing up skiing right now, to see folks from the United States or from Alaska, you know, competing in these games? What do you think about that?

Kikkan Randall: I’m really excited for the opportunity we have. And what I’ve noticed in my role with NSAA so far, is that over the last 50 years of cross-country skiing really kind of coming to form in Anchorage, so many amazing things have been accomplished. I mean, great culture of skiing, lots of people out there doing it, strong programs. And yet, we still have an opportunity to grow the sport, whether that’s participation, whether that’s our competitive athletes, and I believe there’s still things we can do within the ski community to build that excitement.

So the Olympic Games, what it can do is it can provide that interest, that inspiration. I’m thinking back to eight years ago, when I was in a position to be, I was the gold medal favorite, coming into the skate sprint, and just how much excitement and enthusiasm there was in Anchorage. And at that point, eight years ago, Gus Schumacher was 13 years old. Hannah Halverson, you know, early teens. So they were just starting to dream about what the Olympics could mean to them. And now those athletes come in, they’re the new generation inspiring.

So what kids do we have sitting out there in, you know, in Anchorage, or anywhere in Alaska? They’re starting to be like, “I think I want to go to the Olympics.” And now they’re not just dreaming about going to the Olympics, they’re dreaming about winning medals, because we’ve proven in the last four years that Americans can win. And that’s exciting. So I’m excited about the inspirational value of of these Olympics going on, and I just wanted to play my part to help build that enthusiasm, because I really believe it’s an amazing sport. It’s an amazing lifestyle, and the more we can get kids and families pulled into the sport for their own health, for the camaraderie, and then ultimately send a bunch more Alaskans to the Olympics, that would be fantastic.

For the men’s relay the other day, I didn’t quite get it in on on my commentating, but I wanted to: Three of the four members on the U.S. Men’s relay team are Alaska state ski champions. And I think that’s pretty cool to see some real homegrown Alaskans on that team. You know, Luke Jager, skied leg number one, Scott Patterson, leg number two and Gus Schumacher, leg number three. Let’s get an all Alaska relay team on their someday.