Thunder on the Tundra

Lew Freedman

Description

This is the moving story of high school students in an isolated village at the top of Alaska starting a football team. Against long odds the Whalers had to practice and play in extreme conditions and travel hundreds of miles from home when they went on the "road," flying for each game.They ended their first season victorious, while maintaining their subsistence hunter-gather culture.
"The moment I heard that Barrow High School was going to start a football team I knew something special was in the works. 'Who were they going to play', I thought. 'Where is the closest opponent?," I wondered."
Ch 1:August Two-a-days, Ch 2:This is Barrow, Ch 3:Beginnings, Ch 4:Practive Makes Perfect, Ch 5:Are You Ready for Some Football?, Ch 6:Football on the Last Frontier, Ch 7:Field of Dreams, Ch 8:Do You Believe in Miracles?, Ch 9:Bad Old Days, Ch 10:It's a Girl, Ch11:Wild Life, Ch:12 Monroe Catholic, Ch 13: The Whalers, Ch 14:Seasons, Ch 15:Getting Ready, Ch 16:The Ravens Are Ravenous, Ch17:Road Trip, Ch 18:Everyone Knows the Whalers, Ch 19:Houston Hospitality, Ch 20:Home on the Tundra Again, Ch 21:Making it All Work, Ch 22:Delta Force, Ch 23:The Pipeline Bowl, Ch 24:Pivotal Moment, Ch 25:The Longest and Last Road Trip, Ch 26 End Game.

Sujets

• Sport
• Sports collectifs
• Rugby & Football américain
• Autour du sport
• Histoire du sport
• Rugby
• Alaska
• Football
• African American
• Recreation
• Asian American
• Amateur sports
• Samoans
• Tongans
• American football
• Fútbol americano
• Sports

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780882408446
• Langue: English

Extrait

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
C HAPTER 1 August Two-a-Days
C HAPTER 2 This Is Barrow
C HAPTER 3 Beginnings
C HAPTER 4 Practice Makes Perfect
C HAPTER 5 Are You Ready for Some Football?
C HAPTER 6 Football on the Last Frontier
C HAPTER 7 Field of Dreams
C HAPTER 8 Do You Believe in Miracles?
C HAPTER 9 Bad Old Days
C HAPTER 10 It s a Girl
C HAPTER 11 Wild Life
C HAPTER 12 Monroe Catholic
C HAPTER 13 The Whalers
C HAPTER 14 Seasons
C HAPTER 15 Getting Ready
C HAPTER 16 The Ravens Are Ravenous
C HAPTER 17 Road Trip
C HAPTER 18 Everyone Knows the Whalers
C HAPTER 19 Houston Hospitality
C HAPTER 20 Home on the Tundra Again
C HAPTER 21 Making It All Work
C HAPTER 22 Delta Force
C HAPTER 23 The Pipeline Bowl
C HAPTER 24 Pivotal Moment
C HAPTER 25 The Longest and Last Road Trip
C HAPTER 26 End Game
Barrow High School Football Roster 2007
Text and photos 2008 by Lew Freedman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Freedman, Lew.
Thunder on the tundra : football above the Arctic Circle / by Lew Freedman.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-88240-742-5 (softbound)
1. Barrow High School (Barrow, Alaska)-Football. I. Title.
GV958.B36F73 2008
796.332 62097987-c22
2008017078
Alaska Northwest Books
An imprint of Graphic Arts Center Publishing Co.
P.O. Box 10306
Portland, OR 97296-0306
[phone] www.gacpc.com
President: Charles M. Hopkins
General Manager: Douglas A. Pfeiffer
Associate Publisher, Alaska Northwest Books: Sara Juday
Editorial Staff: Timothy W. Frew, Kathy Howard, Jean Andrews, Jean Bond-Slaughter
Editor: David Abel
Design: Andrea Boven Nelson
Production Staff: Susan Dup r
Printed in the United States of America
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank North Slope Borough Schools Superintendent Trent Blankenship for his help, cooperation, and open-mindedness in allowing me to spend the 2007 football season with the Barrow High School team at home and on the road.
A special, deeply felt thank-you goes to head football coach Mark Voss, for his unfailing cooperation, his important observations, and his openness in allowing me to tail along all season and watch him and his staff at work teaching football and imparting life lessons to thirty-five teenaged players.
Also deserving of special gratitude for their continual assistance are assistant coaches Jeremy Arnhart, Brian Houston, and Brad Igou. They merely answered a couple of thousand questions, and were always generous with their time.
It is obvious that this project could not have been completed without the cooperation of the players who signed up to play football for the Barrow Whalers. The young men repeatedly offered valuable, humorous, and thoughtful comments, and graciously accepted me into their world.
The same is true for Fran Tate, operator of the world s northernmost Mexican restaurant, Pepe s Top of the World, longtime Barrow philanthropist, and keeper of the Arctic Ocean Polar Bear Club archives, who provided many keen insights.
Thanks to my old friend, Big Bob Aiken, also known as the world s largest Eskimo, who was a major presence on my visits to Barrow, serving as a go-between, introducing me to many people, and offering his thoughts and insights.
And above all, my appreciation goes to the people of Barrow: parents of players, other relatives, football fans, and even those who opposed the creation of a football team, for their hospitality, advice, suggestions, warmth, and acceptance.
Introduction
The moment I heard that Barrow High School was going to start a football team I knew something special was in the works.
Who are they going to play? I thought.
Where is the closest opponent? I wondered.
How will this predominantly Eskimo community embrace this quintessentially American Lower-48 sport? I pondered.
Wow, how things have changed, I realized.
During my seventeen years in Alaska, between 1984 and 2001, all spent working in the sports department of the Anchorage Daily News, I had visited Barrow several times. And I had written about Alaska high school football s quirks and triumphs, from its earliest-in-the-nation start in mid-August to its earliest-in-the-nation conclusion by the third week of October, and its often freezing weather.
When I first arrived, Alaska s population was the smallest of the fifty states at around 500,000. By the time I moved away, it was up to forty-eighth and there were about 620,000 people. While undeniably still the Last Frontier, Alaska had become far more integrated into the mainstream life of the other forty-nine states. This manifested itself in many ways, not the least of which was better access to jet plane service, telephone communications, and cable TV. With connection and population growth came chain stores and chain restaurants, and parents and children with the same demands as their Lower-48 counterparts.
Alaska became much more like the rest of the nation than it had been, and that also meant unseemly influences on youth. There were drug and alcohol problems in villages and communities where it seemed impossible for drugs and alcohol to surface. Cultural changes were vast. Not only did residents of once-remote Alaskan communities know who the most popular singers of the day were and which were the hottest movies, they gained access to them-if not through their computers, at least through shopping trips to Fairbanks and Anchorage.
Concurrent with those changes were changes in the high school sports landscape. Basketball has always been king in the Alaska Bush, partially because many schools were too small to field other teams and you only need five to play hoops. As elsewhere, girls sports proliferated. Whereas once the only high school football teams in the 570,000-square-mile state played in Anchorage, Fairbanks, the Mat-Su Valley, and the Kenai Peninsula, all situated on the limited highway system, population shifts meant towns of 4,500 people wanted their own football teams.
One by one, communities like Nikiski, Skyview, and Houston opened new high schools and sought a broad-based sports menu. Football spread. When Juneau-the isolated state capital, reachable only by boat or airplane-added football, new barriers were breached. Located in the Southeast corner of the state, adjacent to the Canadian border, Juneau is eight hundred miles south of Anchorage. Big bucks were required not only to outfit a team, but to travel.
Until Barrow suited up a team for a limited, nonconference schedule in 2006, Juneau was the standard-bearer for overcoming financial and logistical challenges. Barrow is the flip side, located eight hundred miles north of Anchorage, four hundred miles north of Fairbanks. It is the northernmost community in the United States.
And unlike Juneau, Barrow is culturally and historically quite different from many other Alaskan road-system communities. Barrow has been home to I upiat Eskimos for thousands of years. Residents remain strongly connected to a subsistence hunter-gatherer culture. Among the most powerful influences in a community with a sleek high school, and modern buildings and homes, are the annual bowhead whale hunts. The people are still very close to the land, aware that in a supremely harsh climate it remains imperative to rely upon one another.
The same outlook can be applied to football, sometimes regarded as the ultimate team game. With eleven moving parts on offense and eleven on defense, the players reliance on one another for success usually transcends the individual. This posed a particular challenge in Barrow, where the basic exposure to football was confined to National Football League games on television. There were no youth leagues. There was no junior high feeder program. If you wanted to play high school football in Barrow you learned from scratch: These are the knee pads. These are the hip pads.
Whaling and football. Remoteness and journeys of a thousand miles. Costs and cash. In a place where gigantic crossed whale bones on the beach facing the Arctic Ocean defined the heartbeat of the town, it was fascinating to see how it would all work out.
Two-a-days-the twice-daily preseason practice regimen that coaches employ to drill their players, while they have their undivided attention before school starts-began on July 30 and continued through early August.
My same-day Alaska Airlines flight (people didn t think it was possible) chased the time zones westward, carrying me from Chicago to Seattle to Fairbanks to Barrow in about thirteen hours. On a day when the nation sweltered and the Chicago Bears leaked sweat in their own Illinois training camp, I was the only passenger carrying a full-fledged, hooded parka.
CHAPTER 1
August Two-a-Days
Albert Gerke s Half-Mile walk in full football pads from Barrow High School to the Bobby Fischer practice field in the center of town took him past the community cemetery, past the boxy houses built to withstand ferocious winter weather, and across an uneven grassy landscape. His blue helmet swung loosely in his hand by his side.
Three little boys watched him approach and one said, Do you play football? The quarterback of the northernmost high school football team in the world said yes. Gerke is six-foot-one and weighs a slender 160 pounds, but to the kids about ten years old he was a giant.
Can we touch it? one youngster said. Gerke smiled, stopped, and held out his Whalers football helmet. The boys admired it, stroked it, and looked at Gerke with awe in their eyes. To them he might as well have been Brett Favre.
In this remote city of 4,800 people, where the only neighbors are whales hunted by the I upiat Eskimos of the region for more than a thousand years, football has long