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Mar. 14—This was supposed to be Miisaq Paul's year.
A high school senior for the Kipnuk Falcons basketball team, Miisaq stands over 6 feet tall. He's swift, strong, skilled, and hoped to lead the Falcons to a second straight berth in the 1A state tournament this season.
"It's important to me because it's my favorite sport," Miisaq said.
Miisaq lived in Anchorage for his first two years of high school at West before moving back to Kipnuk last year. He was poised to enjoy a stellar senior season at home when in October, the remnants of Typhoon Halong wiped out most of his community on the Bering Sea coast. What followed was the largest mass evacuation effort in state history. Along with some of his teammates and more than 600 Western Alaska residents, Miisaq was brought to Anchorage with his family.
Questions immediately arose from the devastation: Who can stay? Will the village be rebuilt? Where could it be rebuilt?
And what about basketball season?
Upon evacuees' arrival in the state's largest city, Anchorage residents hurried to support them. Many families initially stayed at mass shelters before being placed in hotel rooms. Responders and other community members scrambled to help with additional needs: Native organizations provided meals with traditional foods to give evacuees a taste of home. Children enrolled in Anchorage schools. And officials with the state's athletic organization and the Anchorage School District quickly moved to organize basketball teams for boys and girls from Western Alaska living in Anchorage.
Miisaq and the Falcons went from competing in the 1A division last year in Kipnuk to facing 4A competition in Anchorage. And while the scoreboard didn't show success quite like it had in previous years, at times it still sounded like the gym inside Kipnuk's Chief Paul Memorial School. Miisaq's parents — Sam and Sophie Paul — sat in the stands, leading a fervent group of vocal Kipnuk residents supporting their team, together.
"Nayurluku tauna 4-aaq nayurluku," Sam hollered. "Ullagluku!" — "Guard that 4, guard him. Go to him."
"Cingqaquluki," Sophie yelled. "Ellaicetun cingqaquluki!" — "Push them around. Like they're doing it, push them around."
Sam and Sophie cheered for their son at every game this season, often in Yup'ik. The opponents and courts were foreign to the evacuee hoopers, but the sound coming from their fans in the bleachers was one thing that remained consistent.
"Kind of feels like home," Miisaq said.
Some evacuated students had just eight days between surviving the life-threatening storm and starting class at new schools in Anchorage. Older students now attend high schools filled with more people than lived in their entire community back home. Incorporating nearly 180 evacuee students, the school district sought to ease their transition by expanding after-school Native Youth Olympics offerings and creating the two basketball teams. Instead of requiring evacuee students to try out for the district's varsity teams — which would require a waiver — officials scheduled the boys' squad against junior varsity teams, and the girls played C-Teams.
Billy Strickland, executive director of the Alaska School Activities Association, applauded the school district's plan to allow as many students as possible to play basketball, even under difficult circumstances.
"Basketball in Alaska is like Texas football, except we take it more serious," Strickland said. "These kids have really lost a lot of their school, their homes, their communities, but we know this is an important activity for them."
Jesse Igkurak, from Kwigillingok, had just finished coaching the Kwigillingok Eagles' mixed-six volleyball team when he answered the call to coach the Kipnuk boys basketball team in Anchorage this winter. Igkurak also evacuated from his community to Anchorage in October.
"I started seeing posts from our region saying, 'No more Kipnuk Falcons, no more Kwigillingok Eagles,' and that really bothered me," Igkurak said after practice in December.
"I didn't want the students to feel left out. What we went through is painful, and I know for sure most of them were thinking, 'What if Halong didn't hit us right now? We'd be playing,' " he said.
'City ball is different'
While basketball is a familiar staple in rural Alaska communities, the game is played differently in Anchorage. Urban players enjoy the luxury of private competitive leagues in the offseason, and a plethora of indoor and outdoor courts throughout the city. Kipnuk players mostly gather for spontaneous pickup games in summer.
Kipnuk teams playing in Anchorage each had about a half-dozen players, while their opponents typically brought twice as many. Both Kipnuk teams were inexperienced, with just three returning players between them.
Their opponents often sent full units of five rested bench players to substitute into the game during timeouts, while Kipnuk could send just one.
The Anchorage players also were bigger and taller. Most of those teams got to return to their homes after the game, instead of hotel rooms.
Rural teams typically travel on the weekends to play games on Fridays and Saturdays. As Igkurak got the team's schedule for the season, he rattled off midweek games against the South Anchorage Wolverines and the West Anchorage Eagles.
"I don't know where South is," Igkurak said. "I don't know where West is."
The Falcons also had to adjust to the 35-second shot clock, new to 4A-level games this year. Teams often employed a full-court press or played half-court zone defenses that Kipnuk teams were not accustomed to playing against.
"It's been kind of tough, because city ball is different," Miisaq Paul said. "They're tall, and big."
Alaska's disparate basketball cultures clashed during a January game at "The Nest," the state's largest high school gym at West. Before the game, West players warmed up with sophisticated layup drills that put multiple basketballs in motion at once. Kipnuk players hoisted shots up as soon as they rebounded the lone ball shared among all six players.
Already showing signs of fatigue in the first half, Kipnuk players took advantage once the West defenders backed off. Their first basket — a free throw from Miisaq — sent the Falcon faithful into a frenzy as the lead shrank to 31 points. Opting to take what the defense gave him, Miisaq connected on a pair of deep 3-pointers late in the first half, drawing applause from fans of both teams.
Julia Dock, whose son Curtis played for the Falcons, was the loudest Yup'ik voice in the crowd that night.
"Kiiki! Kiiki!" Dock shouted — "Hurry! Hurry!"
West ended up winning the game 101-21.
Throughout the season, Igkurak emphasized that his players should take pride in their successes against stiff competition.
"Reminding them, we are playing 4A and when we reach 10 points, that's when we cheer," Igkurak said.
Igkurak said his players felt intimidated early in the season, but shook off nerves and raised their level of competition later in the year, even scoring 30 points against Chugiak in their second-to-last game.
"My heart was rejoicing," Igkurak said.
Igkurak said he was proud of the effort his players showed on the court this season. With just two seniors, he hopes the younger players could still return to play at home in Kipnuk, eventually.
"They kept going and going. They didn't give up just because their score was way down," Igkurak said. "I'm sure they learned something out of this 4A basketball, and I'm sure they'll pass it on to their teammates in their village."
'Good for them'
While the boys team struggled more against Anchorage teams, the girls squad fared better.
Nathan Albrite and his family evacuated from Kwigillingok to Anchorage. He sat in the stands with families from Kipnuk to watch his daughter Charly Alexie play in January. The girls lost, but Albrite was content watching his daughter on the court.
"As long as she's playing ball, her favorite sport, I'm happy," he said.
Annmarie Paul recently played for Kipnuk and took over coaching duties for the Lady Falcons' team this year.
"It's good for them," she said. "You're sitting around at home and doing nothing, but some of them are sick of being at home."
Shawna Paul was the team's lone returner, and her experience was crucial to the Lady Falcons' success. During a midseason matchup against Bartlett High School, she pulled down more than a dozen rebounds — often over much taller girls — and ended the game with 23 points. Kipnuk ultimately lost the game by 25 points, but it didn't bother her coach.
"We had fun, that's all that matters," Annmarie Paul said.
The team grew stronger as the season went on, reaching the C-Team tournament championship game against Chugiak in late February. The Falcons lost by four, but coach Paul told her players they should be proud.
"They pushed themselves," she said.
Shawna Paul's father, Michael Paul, sat with about 50 supporters in the stands for the championship game.
He said he was proud of the team. He said he thinks they'll remember this season for "the way they came together after a bad situation we went through."
Family in the bleachers
After playing hundreds of miles away from home during the regular season, students who remained eligible traveled to Eek in mid-February to compete in the mid-coast league tournament as a coed team. It was the first time the players had gone back to the Bering Sea coast since October when Halong struck.
Igkurak said fans in Eek created an atmosphere that his players hadn't experienced yet this season.
"Wild," Igkurak said. "It was good to hear a loud cheer."
But in Anchorage, on nights when only one team played, the Kipnuk cheering section would double in size. The boys team would watch the girls, and the girls followed suit. After their January loss to Bartlett at Eagle River — which served as the "home court" for both teams — the girls squad hurried out of the gym to go watch the boys play their first game at Bartlett.
They joined bleachers full of grandparents, aunties, uncles, siblings and swarms of small children running around the upper track. The Western Alaska evacuees in attendance were almost equal to the number of Bartlett fans sitting on the opposite side.
Many in the bleachers were uncertain about when they can return to their homes, what will be there when they do, or if they will return at all.
Falcon guard Joshua Kiunya's aunt Loretta Carl sat with a group of elders watching the game in early January. Carl said being there with her friends felt like getting a small piece of her community back.
"It's been a while since I've seen them. It's really nice to be around them, like back home," Carl said. "It was a horrific experience for all of us, but right now just looking at them playing, and people enjoying the people from back home, (it's) keeping our mind busy and away from what we went through."
After the final buzzer
Basketball season is now over for about a dozen teenagers from Western Alaska, but the daily grind of adjusting to life in the big city is not. Sam, Sophie and Miisaq Paul are living in a home in West Anchorage. Basketball brought the family together — before Miisaq Paul was born, Sam and Sophie met at an adult league tournament.
Back home, Miisaq would help his father provide food for their family by hunting, fishing and berry picking. Sophie said just before the storm hit, Miisaq kept his father safe when he wanted to venture away from their house and help his neighbors. Their home didn't wash away completely but sustained major damage, just like nearly every other building in the village.
Sophie reminisced about days when her children would wander around Kipnuk for hours until suppertime.
"Anchorage is bigger, things are more accessible, food, water, transportation," Sophie said. "But the thing is, there is no freedom."
Sophie said Miisaq takes after her in that he is diligent about staying on top of his chores and schoolwork, primarily during basketball season.
At the family's dinner table, Sophie told Miisaq how she's seen the team improve. But she was more concerned with taking every available chance to watch her son play.
"Score don't matter to me, as long as I see you play, it doesn't matter. Just play your best and enjoy," Sophie said.
While his younger teammates might return to their homes in Kipnuk and play in the Chief Paul Memorial School gymnasium in front of their home fans again someday, Miisaq plans to attend AVTEC in Seward to study welding after he graduates this spring.
Sophie said her son's upbringing in Kipnuk helped prepare him for the opponents he faced on the basketball court this year.
"We tell him just, 'Remember you've faced tougher situations than this,' and use those tough situations in playing ball," Sophie said. "We've gone through so much. That typhoon defined us, who we were and who we hold on to as family. And I am proud of him, of who he is and who he became."
Daily News photojournalist Marc Lester contributed reporting.
Sally Samson, associate professor of Yup'ik language and culture at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, provided translation for this story.
Continue reading...
A high school senior for the Kipnuk Falcons basketball team, Miisaq stands over 6 feet tall. He's swift, strong, skilled, and hoped to lead the Falcons to a second straight berth in the 1A state tournament this season.
"It's important to me because it's my favorite sport," Miisaq said.
Miisaq lived in Anchorage for his first two years of high school at West before moving back to Kipnuk last year. He was poised to enjoy a stellar senior season at home when in October, the remnants of Typhoon Halong wiped out most of his community on the Bering Sea coast. What followed was the largest mass evacuation effort in state history. Along with some of his teammates and more than 600 Western Alaska residents, Miisaq was brought to Anchorage with his family.
Questions immediately arose from the devastation: Who can stay? Will the village be rebuilt? Where could it be rebuilt?
And what about basketball season?
Upon evacuees' arrival in the state's largest city, Anchorage residents hurried to support them. Many families initially stayed at mass shelters before being placed in hotel rooms. Responders and other community members scrambled to help with additional needs: Native organizations provided meals with traditional foods to give evacuees a taste of home. Children enrolled in Anchorage schools. And officials with the state's athletic organization and the Anchorage School District quickly moved to organize basketball teams for boys and girls from Western Alaska living in Anchorage.
Miisaq and the Falcons went from competing in the 1A division last year in Kipnuk to facing 4A competition in Anchorage. And while the scoreboard didn't show success quite like it had in previous years, at times it still sounded like the gym inside Kipnuk's Chief Paul Memorial School. Miisaq's parents — Sam and Sophie Paul — sat in the stands, leading a fervent group of vocal Kipnuk residents supporting their team, together.
"Nayurluku tauna 4-aaq nayurluku," Sam hollered. "Ullagluku!" — "Guard that 4, guard him. Go to him."
"Cingqaquluki," Sophie yelled. "Ellaicetun cingqaquluki!" — "Push them around. Like they're doing it, push them around."
Sam and Sophie cheered for their son at every game this season, often in Yup'ik. The opponents and courts were foreign to the evacuee hoopers, but the sound coming from their fans in the bleachers was one thing that remained consistent.
"Kind of feels like home," Miisaq said.
Some evacuated students had just eight days between surviving the life-threatening storm and starting class at new schools in Anchorage. Older students now attend high schools filled with more people than lived in their entire community back home. Incorporating nearly 180 evacuee students, the school district sought to ease their transition by expanding after-school Native Youth Olympics offerings and creating the two basketball teams. Instead of requiring evacuee students to try out for the district's varsity teams — which would require a waiver — officials scheduled the boys' squad against junior varsity teams, and the girls played C-Teams.
Billy Strickland, executive director of the Alaska School Activities Association, applauded the school district's plan to allow as many students as possible to play basketball, even under difficult circumstances.
"Basketball in Alaska is like Texas football, except we take it more serious," Strickland said. "These kids have really lost a lot of their school, their homes, their communities, but we know this is an important activity for them."
Jesse Igkurak, from Kwigillingok, had just finished coaching the Kwigillingok Eagles' mixed-six volleyball team when he answered the call to coach the Kipnuk boys basketball team in Anchorage this winter. Igkurak also evacuated from his community to Anchorage in October.
"I started seeing posts from our region saying, 'No more Kipnuk Falcons, no more Kwigillingok Eagles,' and that really bothered me," Igkurak said after practice in December.
"I didn't want the students to feel left out. What we went through is painful, and I know for sure most of them were thinking, 'What if Halong didn't hit us right now? We'd be playing,' " he said.
'City ball is different'
While basketball is a familiar staple in rural Alaska communities, the game is played differently in Anchorage. Urban players enjoy the luxury of private competitive leagues in the offseason, and a plethora of indoor and outdoor courts throughout the city. Kipnuk players mostly gather for spontaneous pickup games in summer.
Kipnuk teams playing in Anchorage each had about a half-dozen players, while their opponents typically brought twice as many. Both Kipnuk teams were inexperienced, with just three returning players between them.
Their opponents often sent full units of five rested bench players to substitute into the game during timeouts, while Kipnuk could send just one.
The Anchorage players also were bigger and taller. Most of those teams got to return to their homes after the game, instead of hotel rooms.
Rural teams typically travel on the weekends to play games on Fridays and Saturdays. As Igkurak got the team's schedule for the season, he rattled off midweek games against the South Anchorage Wolverines and the West Anchorage Eagles.
"I don't know where South is," Igkurak said. "I don't know where West is."
The Falcons also had to adjust to the 35-second shot clock, new to 4A-level games this year. Teams often employed a full-court press or played half-court zone defenses that Kipnuk teams were not accustomed to playing against.
"It's been kind of tough, because city ball is different," Miisaq Paul said. "They're tall, and big."
Alaska's disparate basketball cultures clashed during a January game at "The Nest," the state's largest high school gym at West. Before the game, West players warmed up with sophisticated layup drills that put multiple basketballs in motion at once. Kipnuk players hoisted shots up as soon as they rebounded the lone ball shared among all six players.
Already showing signs of fatigue in the first half, Kipnuk players took advantage once the West defenders backed off. Their first basket — a free throw from Miisaq — sent the Falcon faithful into a frenzy as the lead shrank to 31 points. Opting to take what the defense gave him, Miisaq connected on a pair of deep 3-pointers late in the first half, drawing applause from fans of both teams.
Julia Dock, whose son Curtis played for the Falcons, was the loudest Yup'ik voice in the crowd that night.
"Kiiki! Kiiki!" Dock shouted — "Hurry! Hurry!"
West ended up winning the game 101-21.
Throughout the season, Igkurak emphasized that his players should take pride in their successes against stiff competition.
"Reminding them, we are playing 4A and when we reach 10 points, that's when we cheer," Igkurak said.
Igkurak said his players felt intimidated early in the season, but shook off nerves and raised their level of competition later in the year, even scoring 30 points against Chugiak in their second-to-last game.
"My heart was rejoicing," Igkurak said.
Igkurak said he was proud of the effort his players showed on the court this season. With just two seniors, he hopes the younger players could still return to play at home in Kipnuk, eventually.
"They kept going and going. They didn't give up just because their score was way down," Igkurak said. "I'm sure they learned something out of this 4A basketball, and I'm sure they'll pass it on to their teammates in their village."
'Good for them'
While the boys team struggled more against Anchorage teams, the girls squad fared better.
Nathan Albrite and his family evacuated from Kwigillingok to Anchorage. He sat in the stands with families from Kipnuk to watch his daughter Charly Alexie play in January. The girls lost, but Albrite was content watching his daughter on the court.
"As long as she's playing ball, her favorite sport, I'm happy," he said.
Annmarie Paul recently played for Kipnuk and took over coaching duties for the Lady Falcons' team this year.
"It's good for them," she said. "You're sitting around at home and doing nothing, but some of them are sick of being at home."
Shawna Paul was the team's lone returner, and her experience was crucial to the Lady Falcons' success. During a midseason matchup against Bartlett High School, she pulled down more than a dozen rebounds — often over much taller girls — and ended the game with 23 points. Kipnuk ultimately lost the game by 25 points, but it didn't bother her coach.
"We had fun, that's all that matters," Annmarie Paul said.
The team grew stronger as the season went on, reaching the C-Team tournament championship game against Chugiak in late February. The Falcons lost by four, but coach Paul told her players they should be proud.
"They pushed themselves," she said.
Shawna Paul's father, Michael Paul, sat with about 50 supporters in the stands for the championship game.
He said he was proud of the team. He said he thinks they'll remember this season for "the way they came together after a bad situation we went through."
Family in the bleachers
After playing hundreds of miles away from home during the regular season, students who remained eligible traveled to Eek in mid-February to compete in the mid-coast league tournament as a coed team. It was the first time the players had gone back to the Bering Sea coast since October when Halong struck.
Igkurak said fans in Eek created an atmosphere that his players hadn't experienced yet this season.
"Wild," Igkurak said. "It was good to hear a loud cheer."
But in Anchorage, on nights when only one team played, the Kipnuk cheering section would double in size. The boys team would watch the girls, and the girls followed suit. After their January loss to Bartlett at Eagle River — which served as the "home court" for both teams — the girls squad hurried out of the gym to go watch the boys play their first game at Bartlett.
They joined bleachers full of grandparents, aunties, uncles, siblings and swarms of small children running around the upper track. The Western Alaska evacuees in attendance were almost equal to the number of Bartlett fans sitting on the opposite side.
Many in the bleachers were uncertain about when they can return to their homes, what will be there when they do, or if they will return at all.
Falcon guard Joshua Kiunya's aunt Loretta Carl sat with a group of elders watching the game in early January. Carl said being there with her friends felt like getting a small piece of her community back.
"It's been a while since I've seen them. It's really nice to be around them, like back home," Carl said. "It was a horrific experience for all of us, but right now just looking at them playing, and people enjoying the people from back home, (it's) keeping our mind busy and away from what we went through."
After the final buzzer
Basketball season is now over for about a dozen teenagers from Western Alaska, but the daily grind of adjusting to life in the big city is not. Sam, Sophie and Miisaq Paul are living in a home in West Anchorage. Basketball brought the family together — before Miisaq Paul was born, Sam and Sophie met at an adult league tournament.
Back home, Miisaq would help his father provide food for their family by hunting, fishing and berry picking. Sophie said just before the storm hit, Miisaq kept his father safe when he wanted to venture away from their house and help his neighbors. Their home didn't wash away completely but sustained major damage, just like nearly every other building in the village.
Sophie reminisced about days when her children would wander around Kipnuk for hours until suppertime.
"Anchorage is bigger, things are more accessible, food, water, transportation," Sophie said. "But the thing is, there is no freedom."
Sophie said Miisaq takes after her in that he is diligent about staying on top of his chores and schoolwork, primarily during basketball season.
At the family's dinner table, Sophie told Miisaq how she's seen the team improve. But she was more concerned with taking every available chance to watch her son play.
"Score don't matter to me, as long as I see you play, it doesn't matter. Just play your best and enjoy," Sophie said.
While his younger teammates might return to their homes in Kipnuk and play in the Chief Paul Memorial School gymnasium in front of their home fans again someday, Miisaq plans to attend AVTEC in Seward to study welding after he graduates this spring.
Sophie said her son's upbringing in Kipnuk helped prepare him for the opponents he faced on the basketball court this year.
"We tell him just, 'Remember you've faced tougher situations than this,' and use those tough situations in playing ball," Sophie said. "We've gone through so much. That typhoon defined us, who we were and who we hold on to as family. And I am proud of him, of who he is and who he became."
Daily News photojournalist Marc Lester contributed reporting.
Sally Samson, associate professor of Yup'ik language and culture at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, provided translation for this story.
Continue reading...
