Bill Pennington has a great article on Alaskan high school sports in tomorrow's [Monday, March 1] New York Times. The focus is on the challenges of arranging games between small towns that are hundreds of miles apart, when there are often no roads (for example, there's no road to my home, Juneau, the capital city. We're cut off by mountains, glaciers, ice fields, rivers, and arms of the sea.) A nice peek at life in Alaska.
BETHEL, Alaska � It took 90 minutes at sea in a small boat, five hours driving in two vans and 75 minutes on a commuter jet before the boys and girls basketball teams from Seldovia reached Bethel, a remote town in western Alaska.
When the players stepped off the jet onto the Bethel tarmac, as flat as the tundra enveloping it, the late-afternoon temperature was 38 degrees below zero.
Seldovia's players would stay for four nights, sleeping on classroom floors at the local high school, to play three basketball games in a round-robin tournament...
...And so went another typical week in Alaskan high school sports, where to play something as routine as a basketball or volleyball game, hundreds of teams habitually crisscross a mammoth state on jets, marine ferries, vans and even caravans of snowmobiles...
Having
put four kids through the Juneau high school, I can say the story rings true. Travel between the schools is expensive, and the kids work hard to raise the money. By the way, anyone think they'll need yard work this spring? raffle tickets? home baked cookies...
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