Chugiak twins raise the bar on sibling rivalry

Being multi-sport college athletes surely won't be easy, but the Chugiak High seniors have spent their entire life balancing busy sports schedules.

They started playing soccer together when they were 3 and have since been teammates on soccer and hockey teams at the high school and club levels. When the Anchorage School District introduced flag football in 2006, they found time to play -- and excel -- in that sport too.

Life travels fast at the Kelter household. The pace keeps their competitive flames burning constantly and feeds the never-ending game of sibling rivalry that has raged practically since they were born.

"We were fighting to get out of the womb first," Derya said.

As they got older, being the first to do anything meant everything.

They battled to get out of the swimming pool first. They battled to see who could ride a bike first. They battled to see who could get the attention of their parents, Leyla and Scott Kelter, first.

As first-graders, they were enrolled in the same class at a Catholic school in Arkansas, where their teacher would award line-leader duty to students celebrating a birthday.

On March 21, Alev and Derya's birthday, an argument over who got line-leader status was decided by the teacher -- and Derya lost.

"She let (Alev) go first because her name starts with an A," Derya said. "But she didn't go with, 'I'm literally older!' I'm still jacked about that."

For the record, Derya was born at 8 a.m. -- exactly one minute before Alev. They were each 1912 inches long, but Derya weighed 1 pound, 9 ounces more than Alev.

But these days, more often than not, people figure Alev is the older twin because of her size. Alev checks in at 5-foot-8 and 150 pounds, and Derya is 5-foot-6, 120 pounds.

The jury is out over which twin is strongest.

"I can do more pull-ups," Derya said. "But she can probably do more pushups because she's training for worlds."

Alev was a 2008 member of the world champion U.S. Women's National Under-18 hockey team. She's in Minnesota this week to try out for the team again. If she makes it, she'll travel to Germany and help the Americans defend their title.

Derya, parents Scott and Leyla, and 11-year-old brother, Evren, are going to Germany no matter what happens at the tryout. They're calling the trip a family vacation to avoid jinxing Alev's tryout.

"We hope to see her there," Scott said.

SKATING WITH THE BOYS

Alev and Derya have shared everything from clothes to bedrooms to secrets, so it's fitting they finally share ice time this season, for the first time in their high school hockey careers.

Alev has played defense on the boys varsity team since her sophomore season -- she was injured her freshman year with a broken collar bone -- but Derya, a forward, spent three seasons on the boys junior varsity before moving up this season.

Alev's position on the team is secure; Derya battles for her spot daily.

"It's a constant tryout for me," Derya said.

It was hard to watch Alev play on the varsity team for two seasons, Derya said. "I was a little hurt," she said.

But she didn't take it too personally. As the smallest twin, Derya understood she needed more time than her sister to develop the speed and stick-handling skills needed to play with the varsity boys.

"My shot is nowhere near a ripper," she said. "I can't fight physics."

Making the team this season was a relief, she said. Now she can skate with her sister all the time.

Alev and Derya are best friends. Always have been, always will be. Each will confess that life stinks when they're apart.

Even so, they try to avoid one-on-one situations whenever they're practicing on the ice or the soccer pitch.

"It really gets heated," Derya said.

"People ask why we don't do it more often," Alev said. "We don't want to, because we get so competitive that we'll start fighting."

Just a few weeks ago at practice, Alev lined up for a shot with Derya standing on net. Alev took the shot anyway and pelted Derya in an unprotected area. Derya bum-rushed her sister for revenge.

"Get her!" a teammate yelled. "Cat fight!"

KELTER CRUNCH

Born in Florida and raised in other warm-weather states, the Kelter twins grew up playing soccer in a boys league.

They moved to Eagle River when they were 8, but league rules wouldn't allow them to play boys soccer.

They learned how to ice skate that year and tried out for a boys competitive hockey team. They didn't make the cut and played girls hockey instead. Two years later, they improved enough to make a boys competition team.

The switch from girls hockey to boys hockey was like going from boot camp to the front line. They had entered a new world, one that allowed checking.

"You have to pick up your physicality," Derya said. "Otherwise you're going to get railed."

Derick Guzman gave Derya her first lesson in checking. She was delirious after he delivered the full-body hit.

"I couldn't see or breathe," she said.

Her coach kept her in the game.

"Get your helmet back on," Derya recalls him saying. "That didn't hurt you."

Derya no longer feels pain at the rink.

"You can't feel pain in boys hockey," she said. "Otherwise you don't play hockey."

When Alev was in ninth grade, she played on the North Stars boys midget team. One time, she fell to the ice while fighting for the puck. Her opponent's stick broke her fall -- and her collar bone. She skated toward the nearest bench for help.

"Get out there!" yelled her coach, Kjell Vassen. "You're on the power play!"

"Coach! I broke my collar bone!" she yelled back.

"OK. We'll get you off the next shift," he said.

Alev went to the emergency room that night and left wearing a butterfly sling. Six weeks later, she was playing in a national soccer tournament.

MULTI-BADGERING

Athletics could get tough for the Kelter twins at Wisconsin, where they plan to play two college sports that overlap.

The women's soccer regular season runs mid-August through the end of October. If the Badgers go deep into the playoffs, the Kelters could remain on the pitch until November or even December. The Badgers have qualified for the NCAA tournament 14 times since the program started in 1981.

The women's hockey team -- currently ranked No. 1 -- starts its season in late September. No matter how deep the Badgers' soccer team goes into the playoffs, the Kelters are bound to miss some ice time.

Finding an athletic department willing to support athletes who want to play two Division I sports seemed like an endless search, the sisters said.

Alev and Derya traveled the country separately, searching vigilantly for the right college. They considered a plethora of choices -- Boston College, Ohio State, Minnesota, Yale, California-Berkeley, North Carolina and Harvard.

Through it all, the Kelters had a pact.

"We weren't going to be a package deal," Alev said. "If we were going to the same school, it was because we both wanted the same things."

As it turned out, Wisconsin had everything the Kelters wanted. Derya wants to enroll in its school of medicine. And Alev, who is undecided on her major, fell in love with Madison.

It helped that Badgers hockey coach Mark Johnson, an American hockey legend who scored twice against the Soviet Union in the classic 1980 "Miracle on Ice" game at the Winter Olympics, wanted both Kelters to play for him, even though soccer would make them unavailable for part of the season.

During a conversation with the sisters, Johnson asked them a pivotal question: "If you weren't playing sports, would you still want to come to this school?"

FIRE AND WATER

Tom Huffer Sr., the legendary Chugiak football coach, got to know the Kelters through flag football. He had never coached girls until he started helping with the flag football team the first season the sport came into existence, back when Derya and Alev were sophomores.

Mention the Kelters and all he says is, "Oh, my girls!"

"Those girls are mentally tougher than any guy," he said.

The girls' names are Turkish in origin and have opposite meanings, mom Leyla said. Derya means "the vast sea," and Alev means "fire."

That's fitting, because their personalities are about as different as fire and water. Derya is the dominant twin who's talkative and prone to take the leadership role. Alev is quieter; expresses herself with her actions.

Derya is the kind of person who would feel comfortable writing and delivering a speech in a student government class, her sister said.

As for Alev? "I'd act out her speech," she said.

No wonder that when Leyla was pregnant with the girls, her ultrasounds showed lots of activity from "Baby B," now known as Alev.

"She never stopped moving," Leyla said.

She just didn't move fast enough. Derya beat her to the door, and the sisters have been battling ever since.

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Find Kevin Klott online at adn.com/contact/kklott or call 257-4335.