Sports

The Juneau Douglas Ice Association with assistance from the city’s Youth Activity Board brought renowned skating coach Laura Stamm to Juneau for a three-day skating clinic. Stamm has worked with many National Hockey League players to hone their skating skills so they can become efficient skaters, not just fast. Stamm and one of her staff, Angelo Serse worked with 40 youth players this week, stressing the fundamentals of skating and how they can produce a stronger hockey player.

All photos by Steven Quinn.

The Juneau Adult Hockey Association is wrapping up its fall season with a full slate of playoff games to be played into mid-November. JAHA sponsors hockey for five tiers: A, B and C coed games, one for women and one for players ages 40 and older, spanning all skill levels. JAHA also features a set of  introductory classes taught by the league’s more advanced players.

All photos by Steven Quinn.

When the City and Borough of Juneau cut the equivalent of 12 full-time employees at the beginning of this fiscal year, the Parks & Recreation department lost three positions and had to cut the decades old adult basketball program.

But through the efforts of one woman, the program is staying alive independent of the city.

Jocelyn Ramirez has been playing basketball since she was a kid. She was a varsity player at Mt. Edgecumbe High School and played basketball in college. For the past 25 years, Ramirez continued playing as an adult in the city run basketball league. She was disappointed when the Juneau Assembly decided to cut it.

“It just seemed wrong for it to end just at the drop of a budget,” Ramirez says.

The city started the basketball league in the 1970s. About 30 teams participate each season in five women’s and men’s divisions with a total of about 330 players.

“It plays a big role in our community. A lot of teams and players would be lost without that activity between November and February and just in Southeast in general, for all walks of life, it’s an important sport,” Ramirez says.

Some players saw the city league as practice for the Lions Club Gold Medal Basketball Tournament held every March in the capital city.

Ramirez went to Juneau’s Parks & Recreation department and asked what needed to be done to keep adult basketball going.

“I decided that I didn’t want to see it lost in the city so I developed a company called S.E. Reign Sports just a little over a month ago so that I could run the league for men’s and women’s adults,” Ramirez says.

Costs are slightly higher than they were under the city, but they’re comparable. Player registration costs $55; team fee is $850. Ramirez anticipates a total budget of about $36,000, none of which she’s pocketing. She just hopes to break even.

With basketball gone, volleyball is the only adult sports program run by Parks & Rec. Up to 450 players participate in each of two volleyball seasons.

City recreation manager Dave Pusich says basketball was cut because it was smaller and costlier.

“Basketball is a little more expensive because you’ve got more referees and scorekeepers, whereas volleyball you don’t have that. We also contracted out the referees to pay them at a higher rate because it’s a little more challenging of a sport to manage,” Pusich says.

For youth, the city offers indoor and outdoor soccer, basketball and a sports development program which covers a variety of activities.

With the city facing another deficit next year, Pusich can’t guarantee that any of these programs, adult or youth, will stick around.

“I think everything is on the table and they’re looking at everything overall right now,” Pusich says.

Pusich says he’s glad the adult basketball league will continue. Ramirez says she’s heard gratitude from others.

“A lot of people are saying, ‘Thank you and you deserve something,’ and I’m like, ‘No.’ I didn’t even look at it like that. I just felt it was a void that needed to be filled, and we filled it,” Ramirez says.

For now, S.E. Reign Sports is focusing on adult basketball, but Ramirez hopes to branch out to other sports, like kickball and dodgeball. Even though it started as a for-profit company, Ramirez says S.E. Reign Sports will eventually become a non-profit, like the Juneau Softball Association and the Juneau Hockey Association.

A Juneau-Douglas High School senior accused of being involved in a paddling incident in May unsuccessfully appealed his disciplinary suspension at last night’s Juneau School Board meeting.

The board planned to hold the proceeding in executive session, but the student, Adam Empson, asked it be public.

Empson, a football and basketball player, read a statement maintaining he was not involved. He appeared with his lawyer, Paul Grant.

School District Chief of Staff Kristin Bartlett says lawyers on both sides took part in an Oct. 15 school board subcommittee hearing on the matter. She says the subcommittee and the full board backed the administration’s suspension.

The suspension followed a third-party investigation that concluded seven incoming seniors paddled six incoming freshmen.

In 2013, Empson’s high school football team was recognized by the Alaska School Activities Association as being No. 1 for sportsmanship among medium-sized schools.

As an athlete at Juneau-Douglas High School, junior Jon Scudder doesn’t think hazing is an issue, even in light of last May’s hazing incident when seven incoming seniors paddled six incoming freshmen. He’s been playing soccer and tennis since freshman year.

“I think that it got carried away this one time, but I do not think it’s a problem,” Jon says.

He says he hasn’t noticed an uptick of anti-bullying or anti-hazing messages from his coaches or teachers since the paddling.

“At the beginning of the sport, whatever it is, every student gets a talk about how bullying is not all right, drugs are not all right. Just the standard talk about all the things that you can’t do if you want to participate in these sports and I think it’s pretty standard every single year,” Jon says.

During the Juneau school board’s September meeting, state education commissioner Mike Hanley said athletic coaches are partly responsible for changing the culture of hazing. A couple weeks later, Juneau School District superintendent Mark Miller says he met with around 80 middle and high school coaches and activity instructors during two closed meetings.

“I made it clear – and everybody was on the same page before; I just reiterated – that hazing and bullying is not acceptable and that coaches need to be proactive in stopping it and report it immediately if they find out that it’s occurred,” Miller says.

The school district has spent at least $20,000 on the hazing investigation. Now, the district is in discussions with Gonzalez Marketing, an advertising and media firm in Anchorage. Miller says the firm will train sports and activities staff on how to more effectively communicate with media, parents and students. He says how staff represents the district is important.

“All coaches have at one time or another said something that they in retrospect would take back or speak differently. This is just a way to get everybody together and do some practicing,” Miller says.

The district is also sending two staff members to Arizona for intensive training on restorative justice, an alternative to traditional punishments of suspension and expulsion. It focuses on promoting respect, taking responsibility and strengthening relationships.

Miller says the goal is to implement a restorative justice plan throughout the district.

“Sending kids home from school as punishment has been shown to be terribly ineffective in both changing behavior and in improving the quality of education in the district,” he says.

The district never released who was punished for the May hazing incident due to student privacy rights. There was one appeal from the discipline process and Miller says the school board will decide tonight behind closed doors what to do with the student grievance.

Jon Scudder says he doesn’t need to know what the punishment was. As a student, he thinks the message on hazing is clear.

“People have realized that, like, if you do it, you will get caught and that it’s not all right,” Jon says.

He just wants everyone to focus on the positive.

“I feel like there was an incident that was a problem but that’s in the past and that we can move on and I think we’ve learned from it and that we can be a stronger community as a whole,” Jon says.

Jon will be a senior next year and he plans to welcome the incoming class with the same respect and encouragement he received as a freshman.

Juneau voters on Tuesday sent two newcomers to the city and borough Assembly, re-elected an unopposed incumbent, and gave the Assembly authority to delegate management of city pools.

Assembly District 2

Debbie White is the likely winner of the closest race of Juneau’s municipal election Tuesday.

Unofficial results show White and Joshua Warren as the top two candidates in the race for Assembly District 2, a seat reserved for residents who live in the Mendenhall Valley or out the road. White has 40 percent of the vote to Warren’s 32 percent.

A real estate broker, White says she’ll bring private sector experience to the Assembly. She says the city needs to focus on living within its means.

“As a city we owe that to the taxpayers to be responsible,” White says. “And I’m not saying that anybody is being irresponsible. But I’m hoping that I can find some places to save some money.”

White says her other top priority on the Assembly will be public safety. A former volunteer firefighter, she says she’ll make every effort to support Capital City Fire/Rescue and the Juneau Police Department.

Warren says he plans to stay involved in local government, advocating for his campaign priorities.

“I really wanted to make sure the Assembly fully funded education, and I’ll come to Assembly meetings and testify if that’s the route I have to take now,” he says. “And I wanted to help make Juneau affordable both for the younger people and for older people to stay here. And I think the people who won today are going to be able to do that, and have that as their priority as well.”

In a strange twist, Karla Hart ended up in third place for Assembly District 2. Hart’s name appeared on the ballot, even after she publicly withdrew from the race to support Warren. If her votes had gone to Warren, he would have beaten White by almost 200 votes. Instead, Hart finished 10 votes ahead of fourth place finisher David Fox. They both had about 11 percent of the vote. Kory Hunt finished in fifth place with about 3 percent of the total.

White will replace longtime Assemblyman Randy Wanamaker, who did not seek re-election.

Areawide Assembly

In unofficial results, Maria Gladziszewski won the Areawide Assembly seat with 47 percent of the vote. She led in nine of the 13 precincts in a three-way race with Norton Gregory and Tony Yorba.

Gladziszewski says housing will be among her top priorities on the Assembly.

“That’s been an issue in Juneau for decades. The Assembly has limited tools, but needs to use all the tools it has to try to help that issue. And, of course, the budget is another one. The city is on notice that we are spending more money than we take in and the Assembly’s got a lot of work to do to figure that out and how to proceed and do what’s best for the most people in town,” Gladziszewski says.

Tony Yorba came in second with 35 percent of the vote. He says he’s humbled by the process of running.

“The best you could hope for is to spend hours and hours of your free time at service to the community and I really admire that, and after having gone through this, I admire it even more,” Yorba says.

Norton Gregory got 16 percent of the vote. One of the youngest candidates on the ballot at age 35, Gregory guarantees he’ll run for Assembly again next year.

“The issues that we’re facing in our community today will most likely still be here next year and they’re still going to need to be dealt with. I feel like I had a really good broad base and so next year, we’re going to try to add a little depth to that base,” Gregory says.

Gladziszewski will replace Carlton Smith on the Assembly. Smith decided not to run for re-election.

Assembly District 1

Jesse Kiehl ran unopposed for Assembly District 1, a seat reserved for a downtown Juneau or Douglas Island resident. He’ll be serving his second term on the Assembly.

Proposition No. 1

Voters approved a ballot measure that allows the Assembly to set up an empowered board to manage the city’s two swimming pools.

Proposition 1 passed with 59 percent of the vote. But some Assembly members have questions about the proposal before it moves forward.

The empowered board would take over operations of the pools, which are now managed by the city’s Parks and Recreation department. Assemblywoman Karen Crane says she needs more details about how the board would function before she’ll vote to create it.

“We have to decide who’s going to be responsible for both short-term and long-term maintenance,” Crane says. “How much money we expect the pools to bring in; what’s going to be the balance between revenue, and what the city has to put in?”

Crane also says there could be issues with employee pay and benefits if pool workers are no longer part of the Parks and Rec department.

Mayor Merrill Sanford admits certain details will need to be sorted out. But he says the empowered board is a good model that’s been used successfully with other city enterprises, like Eaglecrest Ski Area and Bartlett Regional Hospital.

“We get a lot of volunteer time, basically, out of individual citizens of our community,” Sanford says. “And I think they’re great, and usually they do a very, very good job.”

Pool supporters argued for the empowered board after City Manager Kim Kiefer proposed temporarily closing Augustus Brown pool to help the city deal with a projected $12 million budget shortfall over two years.