Opinions

Barrow Whaler fans get ready: It's our year

In 1984 ASAA instituted the 1A, 2A, 3A and 4A basketball school classification. Before then, basketball schools were classified by letters. Class A included the big schools like ones in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Southeast & Mat-Su Valley among others. Class B and C schools were from less populated regions of the state. There have literally been hundreds of Alaska State Basketball Championship trophies handed out over the years since, none of which has ever gone to the Barrow Whaler Boys. For Whaler fans, it's painful to think about. While the majority of 3A boys' titles have gone to Anchorage-based schools, quite a few smaller 3A Alaska cities like Metlakatla, Wrangell, Craig and Haines, among others, have had their boys go all the way. Why not Barrow? We've came close a couple of times. It took us a while to get into contention, 2004 to be precise. And it's a place we have rarely seen.

2004 was the boys' first trip to the finals. It also happened to be one of the first televised Alaska high school championship games to reach the North Slope. Hundreds of Whaler fans watched from the stands of the Sullivan Arena, and thousands at the edge of their seats back home, as the Whalers were in a dogfight tie game against rival Valdez.

With just seconds left to go, Wiggins Lampe Jr. hit an unbelievable go-ahead 3 pointer. It was electric, we could just taste the win ... I mean it was gonna happen. As the seconds ticked down, Valdez dribbled down the court, hoisted up and drilled a desperation 3-pointer near the end of regulation to send the game into OT. The championship slipped away from us in a crushing 70-65 defeat.

It truly felt like someone had died. Some serious tears were shed that evening at the Sullivan, and perhaps even more by volume back home over the years since. The Whalers again reached the finals a year later in 2005, in hard fought, but somewhat less dramatic loss to Heritage Christian. The boys have yet to return to the big game.

In 2007, the Whaler Girls helped ease the pain of the Barrow fan base, bringing the city's first ever state basketball title home with a win over ACS. The girls followed up with another two in 2011 and 2013 with wins over Kotzebue, and again over Anchorage Christian.

Let me tell you, we needed those titles. Basketball is such a big part of life growing up in Barrow.

For the players, you're raised in the stands watching your big brothers and sisters play the game, and you practice, running the sprints up and down the court over and over until it's your turn to take the stage, until it's your turn to hear the cheers ... and the silences.

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For the fans, the Whaler faithful has witnessed so much. The countless, relentless home games year after year, decades of cheering and booing refs, dozens of coaches, the kids who grew up in front of our eyes suiting up in the blue and gold over the past 3-4 decades ... all of that without a title, all those years.

We needed a basketball championship; the fans, the entire community of Barrow needed to see it happen. The Whaler Girls delivered in a big way. We know now that it's possible. It's now time for the boys to bring one home.

It's been 10 years since the Barrow fans have seen their beloved boys get to the finals. Since then a sort of basketball renaissance has been taking place in Barrow. This movement has been headed up in Barrow with private basketball club teams for the youth. Teams like the Utqiagvik Warriors abd Team Barrow. These clubs' volunteer coaches have honed the skills of those boys and girls who are willing to put in the hours and the work to learn the game on a serious level from the ground up, lessons a player in the past might not have necessarily gotten until high school. The City of Barrow's Little Dribbler program was all the community had for the smaller children for a long, long time. It was and still is a great program, but these private clubs have given the basketball community of Barrow that shot in the arm, that extra practice time and game experience the kids were missing to break through at the high school level.

This year, the product of that extra work and floor time is on full display. Be it on the 6 o'clock news, Facebook, or on these boys' home floor, we have witnessed these potent, electrifying kids dazzle us throughout this 2014-2015 season.

The Barrow boys basketball savior, "The Freshmen Phenom" Kamaka Hepa and "The Majestic One" fellow freshmen Travis Adams run this team with a solid core of starters including Sione Tuai, Kevin Goodwin and Antonio Dunbar. These boys who have risen thru the ranks of Little Dribblers and the Utqiagvik Warriors, now lead this dynamic Whaler basketball team of 12 strong. These 12 boys bring us fans true hope. It's that same hope we felt during those brief fleeting moments when Lampe hit that 3-pointer in 2004 ... but it's different this time. This time, the hope has lasted an entire season. It's our time. We will win state.

Lars Nelson lives in Barrow. He graduated from Barrow High School in 1996.

This story is posted on Alaska Dispatch as part of Eye on the Arctic, a collaborative partnership between public and private circumpolar media organizations.

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