UAA Athletics

Of the 6 titles earned by UAA’s women, none was bigger than the first

Originally published on Nov. 23, 2010.

Forget turkey and cranberries and Cowboys and Lions. The UAA women's basketball team has its own Thanksgiving tradition, one that frays nerves and fills trophy cases all at the same time.

We're talking about the team's knack for pulling out close victories in the championship game of the Carrs/Safeway Great Alaska Shootout year after year.

When the Seawolves play for a Shootout championship, history tells us to expect drama. And not just the drama of David beating Goliath, the go-to analogy whenever Division II UAA beats a Division I team. It's the drama of David beating Goliath at the buzzer.

UAA's four straight Shootout titles, won under the guidance of coach Tim Moser, have come by a grand total of nine points.

Add a three-point victory in the 2003 championship game when Jody Hensen was in her first season as coach and the one-point win in the 1990 Northern Lights Invitational championship game when Linda Bruns was in her final season as coach, and the UAA women have claimed six tournament championships by a mere 13 points.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of UAA's first championship, which is also its greatest, because it came back when the women hosted an eight-team tournament. These days, the women host a four-team tournament.

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In 1990, the Seawolves had to beat three Division I teams before they could cut down the nets and accept the commemorative watches given to each player on the championship team.

The three wins came by a total of five points. In the championship game, Greta Fadness — one of the most accurate shooters in Seawolves history — sank a free throw with one second left to lift UAA to an 88-87 win over a South Alabama team fueled by 45 points from All-American Adrian Vickers.

A frenzied crowd of nearly 1,000 packed UAA's Sports Center for the game.

Jodi Bellamy was a guard for that season's Seawolves. She lives in Idaho now — she just became a grandmother — and recently visited former teammate Wendy Sturgis, who had the unhappy task of guarding Vickers. Their conversations included memories of their Northern Lights championship.

"What I remember is Greta making that free throw and the fact we won those three games by (five) points," said Bellamy, 47. "I remember the loudness of the crowd, and I remember it was so great to get the watches. It was really cool to be standing there, getting to be the ones who got the watches."

Kelly Mullican Kowal, UAA's center, was on the bench when Fadness shot the winning free throw.

"I remember grabbing my teammate and almost nail biting," she said. "I can picture to this day Linda in her stance, screaming."

Neither Kowal nor Bellamy could believe it when South Alabama put Fadness on the line. A slender redhead from North Dakota, Fadness set UAA's career and single-season records for 3-point shooting, and she was deadly from the foul line.

"Of all the people to foul," Bellamy said. "We were like, yay! yay! They fouled her!"

Kowal, who teaches language arts at Romig Middle School, said just being in the championship game was huge. Winning it was beyond huge.

"The first thing that comes to mind is just how excited we were just to be in that game, to know the opportunity was there and within our reach," she said. "To win it, it was like we had won the NCAAs. It was a packed house — friends, family, people from out of state — and there was the excitement of a small arena."

Each of UAA's subsequent tournament championships has come in a four-team field at Sullivan Arena, but the smaller field and less-intimate arena hasn't lessened the thrill for the Seawolves.

And the Seawolves still haven't figured out a way to win a tournament title in the first 38 minutes of the game instead of the last two.

Beth Bragg is the ADN sports editor. This is an edited version of a story first published on Nov. 23, 2010.

Beth Bragg

Beth Bragg wrote about sports and other topics for the ADN for more than 35 years, much of it as sports editor. She retired in October 2021. She's contributing coverage of Alaskans involved in the 2022 Winter Olympics.

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