Give an assist to the UAA volleyball team for the latest boon to the UAA women's basketball team.
Rohyn Huss, a multi-sport star for Dimond High who previously signed on with the UAA volleyball team, will play basketball for the Seawolves instead.
The star of Dimond's state championship team this year -- she scored 21 points in her team's 54-49 title-game victory over West Valley -- the 6-foot Huss is one of two former Lynx joining the Seawolves.
The other is Keiahnna Engel, a 5-foot-7 guard who will play her final season at UAA after playing three seasons at Division I Boise State. A 2011 Dimond graduate, Engel was twice voted the Alaska Class 4A Player of the Year and was a Parade All-American in her senior year.
"Both of them fell into my lap," UAA coach Ryan McCarthy said. "I did not speak to either one of them, I'm not even gonna lie. Rohyn had kinda mentioned through some people that she might want to play basketball and I said I was not gonna talk to her till she was through with volleyball. After she quit volleyball, I got the good graces of (UAA volleyball coach Chris Green).
"With Keiahnna, we found out she had been released from Boise State (and) she emailed me before I talked to her.''
Engel is a known quantity who started 39 of 87 career games at Boise State, posting averages of 6.2 points, 3.3 rebounds, 1.9 assists and 1.3 steals. Huss is a versatile player with size and strength to play inside and a shooting touch that can make her dangerous from outside. An all-state player on the Dimond volleyball team, "I think keep down she's a hooper," McCarthy said.
The additions give the powerhouse Seawolves seven players from Alaska, including four from Dimond. Sophomore forward Sierra Afoa and freshman guard Tara Thompson, a redshirt last season, also starred for the Lynx.
Jenna Buchanan of Galena, a senior guard, and Alysha Devine of Wasilla, a junior forward, were key members of last season's team, which was ranked No. 1 in Division I for four weeks and finished with a 29-2 record, losing in the first round of the West Region tournament. The seventh Alaskan is Kodiak's Hannah Wandersee, a 6-1 redshirt freshman.
Meanwhile, four players have left the team, McCarthy said, including Alaskans Alyssa Hutchens of Wasilla and Jerica Nelson of Kodiak.
McCarthy said Hutchens, a junior guard, can't play anymore due to health reasons but will still be involved with the program in some capacity. Kodiak's Jerica Nelson, who got limited playing time as a freshman guard on last season's talent-laden squad, is also gone. She may transfer to a junior college, McCarthy said.
The biggest loss is Leah Bonner, a 5-11 freshman from Nampa, Idaho, who led the Seawolves in scoring when she went down with a knee injury early last season.
Her departure was "partly to do with her injury and partly just being in Alaska," he said. "There was no drama or anything -- she came in and said, 'Coach, I'm too homesick.'
"She told me she wasn't going to play anymore. This was her second ACL injury."
Also gone is 6-1 senior Emily Craft, who McCarthy said is moving to Utah with her husband, Jacob Craft, a freshman on the UAA men's team last season. Emily recently gave birth to the couple's first child, a girl.
Despite those departures, McCarthy said the Seawolves are all but set for next season. He has one available spot left and said he will fill it if he finds the right post player.
"If we fill it, great; if we don't, it's fine," he said.