UAA Athletics

Action aplenty: It’s a great weekend to be a Seawolves fan

The hockey team is back in town, the volleyball team is bidding farewell to three stellar seniors, the runners are gunning for more glory and the basketball teams are making their season debuts — one of them at Cameron Indoor Stadium, that crazy slice of hoops heaven in Durham, North Carolina.

The Seawolves are a busy bunch this week. During a four-day stretch that started Thursday and runs through Sunday, five UAA teams will compete in eight competitions.

Three of those teams — hockey, volleyball and men's basketball — are playing in Anchorage.

The nationally ranked women's basketball team will open the season on the road with an exhibition game Sunday against Division I power Duke, and the nationally ranked cross-country teams will chase Great Northwest Athletic Conference championships Saturday in Monmouth, Oregon.

You could spend most of Saturday following the Seawolves: Cross country at 9 a.m., men's basketball at 2 p.m., hockey at 4 p.m. and volleyball at 7 p.m.

Here's a guide to get you through it all.

Hockey

The Seawolves will reintroduce themselves to Sullivan Arena fans after a long absence from home ice.

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UAA, which last played in Anchorage on Oct. 7, will host Bemidji State in a Western Collegiate Hockey Association games Friday night and Saturday afternoon.

It's the first of two straight home weekends for the Seawolves, who play Bowling Green on Nov. 9-10.

Catch 'em while you can. After the Bowling Green series they won't play at home again until Jan. 4. In the interim, they'll play 10 road games and take some time off for the holidays.

UAA (1-3-0 overall, 0-2-0 in the WCHA) is sharing the wealth when it comes to scoring. It has eight goals, scored by eight players; 16 assists, tallied by 12 players; and 24 points, scored by 14 players. Nicolas Erb-Ekholm and Tomi Hiekkavirta each have a team-high three points, with a goal and two assists each.

Bemidji State is 1-1-0, 2-1-1. It split with Northern Michigan last week and took a win and a tie against North Dakota in its season-opening series.

Volleyball

With two weekends left in the regular season, the Seawolves are in survival mode.

They dropped one spot in the West Region rankings despite winning both of their Great Northwest Athletic Conference matches last week, slipping to seventh place in a region that will send its top eight teams to the NCAA Division II playoffs. Moving ahead of UAA was Azusa Pacific, which vaulted from seventh to fifth by virtue of two Pac West Conference victories.

The Seawolves (19-5 overall, 12-4 GNAC entering the weekend) play their final home match Saturday, when they will honor three players during a Senior Night ceremony prior to first serve.

Two of the seniors are four-year players from Anchorage — Chrisalyn Johnson of Dimond High and Taylor Noga of East High. The third, Tara Melton of Glendale, Arizona, put in two strong seasons after joining the team as a junior.

Johnson, a 5-foot-9 outside hitter, earlier this season became the ninth player in UAA history to reach 1,000 career kills. Entering the weekend, she boasts 1,047 career kills and 951 career digs, numbers that rank her seventh and 19th on UAA's all-time lists. Johnson has 13 double-doubles for the season and 38 for her career.

Noga, a 5-10 libero, is a defensive force with 1,084 career digs going into this week's matches. That ranks her ninth all-time for the Seawolves. She's had nine matches this season with 20 or more digs, including a career-high 27 against league-leading Western Washington.

Melton, a 6-foot middle blocker, racked up a career-high 17 kills last weekend and is on pace to record the second-best attack percentage in school history (she was at .353 percent entering the weekend). She has 91 total blocks this season and 204 in two seasons, putting her 19th on the all-time list.

Cross country

No school has won more GNAC cross-country titles than UAA. In the conference's 17-year history, the men have won 10 championships and the women have won eight.

The women, the 10th-ranked team in Division II, will go for their fourth straight GNAC title. The men, who rank 11th, finished second in the conference last season.

The Seawolves are the clear favorites in the battle for individual championships. Emma Chelimo is undefeated against college runners and earned national runner-of-the-week honors earlier this season, and the men have a potent pair of frontrunners in Felix Kemboi and Wesley Kirui. Last weekend Kemboi beat Kirui by 11 seconds over 10,000 meters for his first victory after finishing a close second to Kirui in UAA's first two meets.

Men’s basketball

Only four players are back from last season, but many fans are no doubt already familiar with a couple of the newcomers.

Three freshmen from Alaska are on the team, including the last two Gatorade Players of the Year — forward Austin White of Ninilchik, who redshirted last season, and guard Tobin Karlberg of Grace Christian. Joining them is guard Travis Adams of Barrow, who helped the Whalers to three state championships.

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None are expected to start this weekend when the Seawolves open the season with two games against Antelope Valley, a quality NAIA program from Lancaster, California.

Brian Pearson, a 6-foot-9 senior center who was worth 7 points and 4.3 rebounds a game as a junior, leads a group of four returners from last season's 15-14 team.

Other veterans include 6-0 sophomore guard Brennan Rymer (3.2 points, 2.1 assists), 6-0 junior guard Jack MacDonald (6.3 points, 1.4 assists) and 6-5 sophomore forward Eric Jenkins (1.8 rebounds).

Also back: Sjur Berg, a proven commodity in the front court who saw action in 58 games (averaging 3 points and 3 rebounds per game) before taking last season off to attend to family matters in his home country of Norway.

UAA's most promising additions are a pair of junior transfers who come with Division I experience. Tyler Brimhall, a 6-5 forward, spent a season at Idaho before transferring to North Idaho College, and Niko Bevins, a 6-6 forward, was at Montana last season.

Coach Rusty Osborne is entering his 15th season with the Seawolves, who are picked to finish fifth in the 11-team GNAC this season.

Women’s basketball

For the second year in a row, the Seawolves will start the season with an exhibition game against Duke. It's a battle of juggernaut programs, although one is a Division I team and the other a Division II team.

UAA is ranked sixth in the Division II preseason coaches poll and Duke is ranked 20th in the Division I poll.

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Duke spanked UAA 87-56 last season in a game that heralded the emergence of 6-1 center Hannah Wandersee of Kodiak. Wandersee lit up the Blue Devils for 19 points and 10 rebounds to spark a breakout junior season. She enters this season as the GNAC preseason player of the year.

Wandersee is one of four starters back from last season's 27-5 team.

This week in Seawolf sports

Friday

Men's basketball — UAA (0-0) vs. Antelope Valley, Alaska Airlines Center, 7 p.m.

Hockey — UAA (1-3-0, 0-2-0) vs. Bemidji State (2-1-1, 1-1-0), Sullivan Arena, 7:07 p.m.

Saturday

Cross country — UAA at GNAC championships, Monmouth, Oregon, 9 a.m.

Men's basketball — UAA vs. Antelope Valley, Alaska Airlines Center, 2 p.m.

Hockey — UAA vs. Bemidji State, Sullivan Arena, 4:07 p.m.

Volleyball — UAA vs. Saint Martin's, Alaska Airlines Center, 7 p.m.

Sunday

Women's basketball — UAA at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, 10 a.m.

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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