Zane Gerlach, Deuce Alailefaleula, Jack Leveque
Three kinds of skiers, two wrestlers and a one-man wrecking crew are the finalists for the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame’s Pride of Alaska youth-division awards.
The awards are presented annually to one boy and one girl selected as the top athletes from the past year. Winners will be announced next week and honored at a June 3 ceremony at the Anchorage Museum.
The boys finalists are Deuce Alailefaleula, a fearsome defensive force for the Bartlett High football team; Zane Gerlach, a nearly unbeatable All-American wrestler for South High; and Jack Leveque, a cross-country skier who excelled for Service High, the Alaska Winter Stars and Team USA.
The girls finalists — Seward wrestler Sobina Clendaniel, Girdwood alpine skier Katie Rowekamp and Anchorage biathlete Reine Soule — all hit their marks on big stages.
Clendaniel, a junior at Seward High, established herself as one of the nation’s top wrestlers with medal-winning performances in two major championships.
At the recent U17 Pan-Am Team Trials, she took the silver medal in the 61kg weight class, and at last summer’s prestigious U.S. Marine Corps Junior National championships in Fargo, N.D., she finished third in the U16 125-pound weight class.
The bronze medal in Fargo earned Clendaniel an invitation to spend a week at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado; she returned from that trip primed for the state high school championships, where she won the 126-pound division to cap a 20-0 season.
Rowekamp had a breakout season on the alpine slopes, one that earned her into a World Cup start next season.
The 16-year-old, who attends Burke Mountain Academy in Vermont, made her debut in two major ski circuits en route to becoming the first Alaska girl in decades to qualify for the World Junior Championships.
In Nor-Am races, a February victory was among her five top-5 finishes in 15 races on the highest tier of alpine racing in North America.
Later that month she made a strong impression in her first race in the Europa Cup, which is one step below the World Cup. The youngest racer in a giant slalom in Norway, Rowekamp started 54th in the first run and finished 29th to earn a second run. There, she put down the fastest time to shoot up to seventh place overall.
At the World Juniors in March, Rowekamp turned heads by clocking the fourth-fastest time in the first run of the giant slalom but slipped to 14th overall by finishing 24th in the second run. A couple of weeks later at the Europa Cup Finals in Austria, she was the top U18 skier in the giant slalom, placing 20th overall.
Soule, 16, made her mark by being fast on her skis and precise in the shooting range at the U.S. Junior National biathlon championships.
Reine Soule, Sobina Clendaniel,
Katie Rowekamp
She swept the gold medals in three races at Lake Placid — winning not only age-group titles, but taking the overall titles in a field featuring athletes ages 15-21.
Soule won one race by 57.5 seconds, another by 46.5 seconds and another by 13.3, all while shooting a combined 41×50.
A member of the Service High and Alaska Winter Stars cross-country ski teams, Soule finished fifth in the 5K freestyle race at the state high school championships and had two top-20 finishes at the U.S. Junior National ski championships.
Soule was part of a large contingent of Alaska skiers at the Junior Nationals, and Leveque was one of the stars.
Leveque was last year’s Pride of Alaska winner at age 15, and he’s coming off another accomplished season.
He repeated as the Alaska Skimeister by winning both individual races at the state high school ski championships.
At the national level, he collected three medals in three races at the Junior Nationals (gold in the 5K classic and the relay; silver in the classic sprint) and placed 14th in the men’s 10K classic at the U.S. National Championships — a result that placed him on the U18 podium in the bronze-medal position.
At the World Junior Championships, Leveque was the youngest skier to crack the top 25 in the 10-kilometer classic. He grabbed 10th place, the lone 16-year-old surrounded by 19- and 18-year-old skiers.
The other boys finalists include a wrestler who is practically unbeatable and a defensive lineman who is practically unstoppable.
Gerlach is on track to become one of Alaska’s all-time best wrestlers. The junior racked up his second straight undefeated high school season, competing in three weight classes (171, 189, 215) and never allowing a match to extend past the second period.
He claimed a state title at 189 pounds to finish the season with a 31-0 record and raise his two-year record to 75-0.
By helping the South Wolverines claim the Division I state wrestling championship, Gerlach became a two-sport state champ — as a member of South’s state championship cross country team, he ran to 20th place at the state meet.
He’s formidable at the national level too, garnering All-American honors in both freestyle and Greco-Roman at USA Wrestling’s U17 World Team Trials last year. He placed third in Greco-Roman and sixth in freestyle.
Gerlach recently made an early college commitment to Arizona State.
Alailefaleula is also headed to Division I. After terrorizing offenses as a one-man wrecking crew in Alaska high school football, he’ll try to do the same at Boise State.
No player in Alaska commanded more attention in 2025 than Alailefaleula (6-foot-1, 290 pounds). He routinely drew double- and triple-coverage, and he routinely blew past blockers to anchor a top-ranked Bartlett defense that allowed 10 points per game.
He supplied eight blocked kicks, 14 sacks and 117 tackles (including 77 solo efforts) in 10 games for the state runnerup Golden Bears.
He’s also a two-time state shot put champion and a classroom standout just shy of a 4.0 GPA.
Pride of Alaska finalists and winners were chosen by a vote of the Hall of Fame’s board of directors.
The youth-division awards are among seven Directors Awards presented every year. Others include Pride of Alaska adult-division awards for the year’s top male and female athletes; two Trajan Langdon Awards (one adult, one youth) for leadership, inspiration and sportsmanship and the Joe Floyd Award for lasting and significant contributions to Alaska through sports.
The Pride of Alaska adult finalists were announced Tuesday. Finalists for the Trajan Langdon and Joe Floyd awards will be announced Thursday.
Winners will be honored as part of the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame’s induction ceremony on June 3, an event that is open to the public.
Headlining the evening will be the enshrinement of the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026, which includes three individuals and two moments.
The individuals are adventurer Dick Griffith, basketball player Butch Lincoln and bowler Sean Rash; the moments are the 1993 triple-overtime basketball title game between East and Bartlett and Ephriam Kalmakoff’s record-setting victory in the 1928 Mount Marathon race.
Pride of Alaska youth awards past winners
Girls
2025: Layla Hays
2024: Emily Robinson
2023: Sayvia Sellers
2022: Lydia Jacoby
2021: Lydia Jacoby
2020: Hailey Williams
2019: Kendall Kramer
2018: Alissa Pili
Boys
2025: Jack Leveque
2024: P.J. Foy
2023: Finnigan Donley
2022: Obed Vargas
2021: Tristian Merchant
2020: Hayden Lieb, Aeyden Concepcion (co-winners)
2019: Jersey Truesdell
2018: Gus Schumacher
Other girls receiving votes on the 2026 ballot (alphabetical order): Brianna Bailey, Hailee Giacobbe, Keelie Kronberger, Valiula Leaoa, Pagan Lester, Gwen Nizich, Jade Skipps, Zada Unutoah, Nevaeh Watkins.
Other boys receiving votes on the 2026 ballot (alphabetical order): Caleb Calhoun, Kai Ciambor, Michael Dickinson, Brian Fazio, Alex Fruean, Cole Miller, Keiran Olson, Seth Paniptchuck, Briggs Winfree.
