BARROW -- Icy blasts from the Arctic Ocean spat whirling snow as the Whalers -- wearing new helmets and shiny blue pants -- threatened to score in the first high school football game ever played above the Arctic Circle.
Whalers fan Dino Olemaun, sporting a black jacket adorned with the Pittsburgh Steelers logo, screamed Inupiaq through a bullhorn.
"Isaksiung ayuktaq!"
It sounded like this: "Suk-seal a-yook-tak!"
It means: "Get the ball!"
A row of women behind him -- a few of the several hundred residents who attended the historic game last weekend -- stamped boots on a beach log and pumped arms like cheerleaders. Their faces framed by fur-lined hoods, they cupped hands around their mouths and roared at the Delta Junction Huskies.
"Who let the dogs out!?"
The halftime entertainment, Native dancers swaying to the beat of skin drums, had just ended. On the rock-strewn dirt field -- the snow didn't stick -- Whalers tailback Quinton Carroll danced through a tangle of slapping arms to push within yards of a touchdown.
Then he nearly fumbled the ball. Then quarterback Jeremiah Lambrecht threw an interception. And that dashed the Whalers' best hope of scoring in the team's first game ever.
They lost 34-0. But winning wasn't the point.
Officials with the school district and Barrow High School organized the football team this spring as an antidote to the school's 50 percent dropout rate. It's also part of a community effort in the Inupiaq village of 4,200 -- the nation's northernmost community -- to stamp out drug use among Barrow's youths.
Grade requirements needed to stay on the team gives boys -- the school's biggest at-risk group -- an incentive to stay in class and out of trouble, officials said.
Plus, a football team was the top request among students wanting more after-school programs in a survey conducted this spring. When sign-up for the team began this summer, it showed. Some 40 boys -- about one-third of the high school's male students -- made the cut.
Still, the expensive program is controversial, especially after what many residents say is a big year for teacher layoffs. The closest opponent, Delta, is 577 miles away. Another team, Sitka, is more than 1,100 miles away.
No roads leave the village. The Whalers will play at least four games this year, including three at home. The team lost its second game Saturday, 33-0 to Valdez. The Whalers must fly opponents north because of the cost. Travel and start-up expenses in the first season could exceed $100,000, school officials said.
Judging from the parade of dust-caked vehicles trundling up the coastal road to witness the game last Saturday afternoon -- the contest was held on the edge of Barrow -- many people didn't care.
They just wanted to watch their first real football game.
"This is awesome!" said Riley Kaleak Jr., cheering from the sidelines, mirrored sunglasses on his forehead reflecting a cloudy sky.
"I can't believe we're watching football in front of the Arctic Ocean. This is history to the Barrow people."
Like most Native villages, Barrow is a basketball town. The game is a relatively cheap sport that gives communities a reason to gather in dark winters.
Many spectators at last weekend's game, some of whom put off plans to hunt migrating caribou, said they had waited their whole lives to see football in Barrow.
More than 200 cars parked in the sand along the ocean, making the gathering feel like a big beach party, a cold one with a 20-degree wind chill.
A row of buses, with one heated for numb spectators, served as wind blocks. Fans ringed the field, some dashing for warmth into canvas tents that normally house whaling crews during hunts off the sea ice.
"Green Bay says they got the frozen tundra," said Billy Aiken, 31, referring to Lambeau Field, where the Packers of the National Football League play. "Well, we got the real frozen tundra."
Many fans watched from the heated cabs of idling trucks. Others hovered around tailgate parties, blackening hot dogs and burgers on grills in the beds of trucks and sneaking sips from cans of beer -- alcohol can legally be consumed only at private parties and homes in this "damp" community.
For the kids, it was a chance to be like the NFL players they watch on TV.
"I don't like it," said senior Brandon Sakegak on the sidelines, huffing after a stint on the defensive line. "I love it."
"You just get pumped up. It's like a rush when you're out there, especially when you get a tackle."
For the big-city journalists and ESPN camera crew that flew north for the game -- the sports channel is doing a documentary about the team -- the game was a visual feast, a partial throwback to the early days of football.
To make the field, volunteers and school maintenance crews lined a former sand pit with chalk and made goal posts out of old sprinkler pipe. Old, laid-down telephone poles became benches. Volunteer announcers called the game from atop a folding ladder at midfield. And scorekeepers tallied points on a dry-erase board.
Plans for a polar bear watch were called off when the wind blew the sea ice away from shore several days before the game. Polar bears live on the ice and can prowl on land if the ice is near shore.
No one seemed worried.
"Let's go, Whalers!" shouted a clapping Price Brower, wearing gloves made of ring seal he'd killed.
He was nestled in an easy chair hauled from his living room and plunked in the sand near the end zone.
Three men perched atop a utility trailer, sitting in plastic chairs in a plywood shelter they had screwed together before the game. They listened to Inupiaq play-by-play from the local radio station and tried to fire up a propane heater that wouldn't work.
They used orange traffic cones like megaphones, screaming through them when the Whalers' ground attack chewed forward behind hefty linemen, including two over 300 pounds.
Turnovers and penalties were the team's nemesis, surprising no one. Barrow coaches more familiar with wrestling and basketball had less than three weeks to teach kids who had only played tundra ball. Just a few had ever crunched pads in a real game before their parents moved north to Barrow.
At practice, players learned the basics: how to cradle the pigskin, how to deep snap or tackle below the waist.
Even the Barrow cheerleaders, faces painted blue and yellow, didn't know what to do, said cheerleader Tennessee Judkins. Shiny pom-poms sat on a picnic table on the sidelines behind the girls.
"We really don't know any football cheers," she said. "I've seen it on TV, but other than that ..." she said, shrugging.
Football matters to the kids, organizers said. It's also important to the community.
Local leaders declared a war on drugs last year, they said. It came in the wake of drug- and alcohol-related incidents involving students or teachers from the school as well as the murder of a cab driver in late 2004 that implicated two high school students, both 19.
One man was acquitted, a state official said. The other was convicted of second-degree murder and is in prison.
Many students are experimenting with meth, marijuana and other illegal drugs, too. This includes some football players, teammates said.
Jim Martin, a sophomore tight end, said he smoked dope a few times but won't ever do it again. Football and other sports give him reasons to stay clean, he said.
"You got to have good lungs, and the kids on the team that don't do drugs (are good role models)," he said.
The new team showed promise despite its inexperience, said Delta Junction coach Ed Wilburn. The defense stopped the Huskies on several drives, he said. And the offense marched steadily forward several times before turning the ball over or losing ground to penalties.
"If it hadn't been but for six errors, we'd be dead in the middle," said Whalers coach Mark Voss toward the end of the game. "These guys got nothing to be embarrassed about."
Senior Chato Gonzales, in uniform after the game, posed for pictures with his parents.
Being on the team gives players a sense of pride, said Gonzales, a standout wrestler.
"Every one feels like a star and role model to people in town," he said. "This is the biggest thing we've ever done. We're kind of making history."
While winning would have been nice, he didn't expect to the first game, he said. Playing for the first time in his life was enough.
"Even when we're losing, it's the best game in the world," he said.
Daily News reporter Alex deMarban can be reached at ademarban@adn.com or 907-257-4310.
