The Homer girls basketball team was supposed to go to the
Juneau tournament Jan. 1-3, but just a couple weeks before it was discovered
that the team had not been signed up. The girls coach decided to join the boys’
team going to the Ketchikan basketball tournament. Unfortunately, many of the
girls’ families had scheduled their vacations around the Jan. 1-3 time,
planning to be back in time to get to Juneau Jan. 1. We had a trip to Arizona
planned for Christmas break, but by a stroke of fate, we’d actually paid for
the cancellation insurance so although we didn’t get our annual Alaska Airlines
companion ticket back (quite a loss, actually), we got our miles and other
tickets reimbursed fully and we so cancelled our vacation so Aurora could play
in the Ketchikan tournament.
Like any other sports trip to the bush, there is an amazing
amount of coordination to make it happen.
Here’s how it looked for the kids:
On Christmas Day (yes, you read that right!) the boys and girls teams,
coaches, managers and Douglas as principal converged on the school at 6 p.m.
(we had friends over and had to shoo them out to drive Douglas and Aurora to town!).
They got on a school bus and rode to Anchorage where they slept on the floor of
a church overnight. Early the next morning the boys headed to the airport,
flying out about 9 a.m. A few hours later, the girls flew out.
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| One of the small airports--Petersburg or Wrangell probably-- as Douglas stood at the door getting fresh air between flights |
The flight hopscotches through small towns in Southeast
Alaska, barely getting in the air before it is time to descend for the next
town. There were 3 stops each way, with Juneau on both routes but different
small towns for the other stops. Each
small town stop involved a 45-minute wait as folks got off, collected their
luggage, and the next folks got their luggage loaded and were screened at the
door of the plane before getting on. Juneau was a longer layover, except for
the girls going there. Apparently the fog was too bad to land, so after
circling for awhile they finally skipped it and went on to the next town.
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| The ferry across the river from the airport to the city of Ketchikan |
The city of Ketchikan (note I said city!) is built against a
mountain so there is nowhere for an airport. So the airport is across the river
on an island. A 15-20 car ferry shuttles vehicles and people across every 30
minutes for $5 per person or $10 per car. The river is only a few hundred yards
wide, so even though Ketchikan is “right there” it is still a process to get
there!
The girls got off the ferry, were picked up by a school bus
and went right into the gym and participated in the shooting contest, a popular
part of basketball tournaments. By then
they were starving because they hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast aside
from a small snack on the plane that the coach bought them all. Doug’s advice
is to take food and water if you take these flights because you cannot get off
the plane at most stops and it is a long day.
Ketchikan band and sports parents offer to be host families
for visiting teams that want it. That first evening the girls were separated
into pairs, met their host families and for the rest of the week their host
families drove them around, fed them and some even took them sightseeing. For
many of the girls who went, this tournament was a highlight of their season, in
part because of meeting locals and the hospitality of the host families.
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| View of Ketchikan from Douglas' hotel window--gray foggy day (the norm there!) |
Ketchikan High School is fairly large, 500-600 students
which puts them solidly in the 4a large schools division. There was quite a mix
of schools represented from all divisions from 1a through 4a, with 8 girls and
8 boys teams playing. So there were some unevenly matched games, but many teams
didn’t have their full rosters as people were on vacation. So it was just a fun
way to get in some basketball over break and not have to miss any school (the
trip spanned 6 days for a 3-day tournament!).
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| Ketchikan High School gym |
The tournament ended on Saturday night. Sunday everyone
reversed the process and ferried to the airport, flew through 3 airports to
Anchorage and caught the bus home (we did a mini-vacation in Anchorage to make
up for missing Arizona).
The price tag for this trip is somewhere in the range of
$8000 per team, with a portion of that being passed on to the players. Having
the host families reduced the cost for the girls since they didn’t need to buy
any food (the boys stayed in a school). Ketchikan helped pay for part of the
trip, which was a nice benny and not one schools can expect when traveling to
the bush.
Overall, it was yet another Alaskan adventure that puts a
whole different spin on travel for school sports.
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