Dig, if you will, the picture: Sullivan Arena, packed to the rafters, all 6,206 seats sold, another 200 standing-room tickets sold, for each of the UAA hockey team’s 17 home games, actual ticket scalpers outside that concrete building before games and cheers so loud...
Anchorage tennis player Emma Lewis made her name in doubles at Bowdoin College, but her claim to fame came in singles. In 2012, she rallied for a thrilling three-set victory in the decisive match to lift Bowdoin to a 5-4 win over Middlebury in the NCAA D3 national...
Man, the 1982-83 edition of the United States Hockey League’s Dubuque Fighting Saints, who seized the Clark Cup, was loaded with Alaska firepower. Anchorage’s Steve MacSwain led the league in scoring with 60-62—122 totals in just 48 games. Yeah, the early 80s were...
Anchorage’s Nina Kemppel was a true trailblazer in every sense of the word, changing the landscape for American cross-country skiing in the 1990s and 2000s. Back in the day the United States racers rarely cracked the top 30 of World Cup races. But Kemppel changed that...
There will never be another Brad Oleson and so it makes sense the UAF men’s basketball program will retire his No. 24 jersey. His story of rags to riches is one for the ages, going from a high school kid out of North Pole who never made the all-state team to a...
The Seawolves made history on a Wednesday. It was Dec. 28, 1988. Just four days before ringing in the new year, the UAA men’s basketball team put No. 2-ranked Michigan through the ringer at the Utah Classic. The Seawolves executed their stall-ball strategy flawlessly...
When UAA-UAF hockey flits across my mind, memories drift back to the late 1980s, when Mike Peluso was the Seawolves’ cornerstone defenseman and Ricky Pitta was the Nanooks’ spark plug. Peluso was 6-foot-4 with long arms, easy-going off the ice, but 200 pounds of...
You’d be hard pressed to start a college career any better than Eagle River’s Kelly Cobb, who took the Duke University women’s soccer team by storm in 2011. The 5-foot-10 forward scored game-winning goals in each of her first two appearances as a freshman, the second...
Level after level, league after league, Brian Swanson delivered points – a ton of them. The hockey center from Eagle River spearheaded Chugiak High to two state championships during a time when he also flourished on his club team. In two seasons with the Anchorage...
Few Alaska high school athletes have dominated three sports in the same season quite like Anchorage’s Ra Shipps did his senior year at East in 1992-93. In football, the bruising all-state running back rushed for 907 yards and nine TDs in just six games. In hockey, the...
This was free-agent week in the NHL, an annual rite of summer in which players cash in big-time and set themselves up for life. It comes with a catchy soundtrack – “Ka-Ching!” And that reminds us of several Alaska players who hit the July Jackpot back in the day, none...