Alaska News

Nation's best snowballs hail from Alaska

Rumrunners make good snowballers, too, it seems.

The downtown Anchorage Rumrunners bar and restaurant has assembled the best competitive snowball fighters in the United States of America, according to NPR News.

While the rest of Alaska got an early case of Iditafever during Fur Rendezvous after a Kotzebue musher got sucker punched during the Rondy world championship sprint races, the Rumrunners were waging a war of Yukigassen, which translates from Japanese to English as "snow battle," and which features hockey helmet-sporting snowball fighters trying to outwit each other in the ancient arts of snow fighting.

Apparently the Rumrunners were as surprised as anyone. Co-captain Gary Ray has a pragmatic (or defeatist) attitude about the team's chances in the upcoming world championships in Japan because the skill level overseas is much higher than in Alaska. But Ray says he and his teammates are ready for the experience no matter how badly it may turn out.

The Japanese have big snow balls. The Japan Yukigassen Federation describes the game as a match between two teams with seven players each, played on a court with specific measurements. The Federation will decide who outballed who.

But the Alaskans aren't there yet -- and they will need help. Those interested in supporting the Rumrunners in their quest to make Alaska and the USA the best snowball fighters in the world, the team has set up an official e-mail address to solicit donations.

Read more about Fur Rondy's snowball fighting Rumrunners here.

Craig Medred

Craig Medred is a former writer for the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Dispatch and Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2015.

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