After years of speculation and experimentation, the shot clock has officially become woven into the fabric of 4A basketball in Alaska, the highest level of high school competition.

Most teams got their first taste of what it’s like to play with a 35-second limit to get the ball to the rim during in-season tournaments in and out of the state over the past few years. Now it’s here to stay.

All boys and girls varsity games between 4A teams are required to use the shot clock, and coaches of some of the top teams in the state believe it’s long overdue.

“The shot clock has been good for us,” said Thomas Berg, head coach of the reigning 4A state champion Colony girls team. “I think there’s another layer of coaching that goes into the shot clock.”

He specifically cited late-clock defense and offense as the two biggest challenges that require strategic adjustments.

“I’ve been a big fan of that this year,” Berg said. “That’s been fun for us. It doesn’t come up a lot. Most teams play fast enough, but down the stretch in quarters and in games, I think it’s a fun part that adds to the excitement of the basketball game.”

In his eyes, there was a lot of holding and moving the ball without any real offensive attempts at the prep basketball level for years. Berg said now in late-game situations, coaches don’t have to instruct their players to intentionally foul as often.

“If you get a stop and then stack those stops, you got a chance,” he said.

Although the idea of a shot clock has been considered in Alaska basketball circles for years, the Alaska School Activities Association officially instituted the shot clock rule at its Board of Directors meeting in December 2024. The motion passed in a 5-3 vote.

Teams at the 1A, 2A and 3A levels are not required to use a shot clock but can utilize it in tournaments during the regular season or if both schools provide written consent to officials before a non-tournament game.

Chuck Martin is the head coach of the Bettye Davis East Anchorage boys team, the three-time defending 4A state champion, and has been a pillar in the Alaska high school basketball scene for decades. He has long been a proponent of the shot clock and is glad that it’s finally being implemented.

“Even though it’s new, it’s not hard for us to get used to it,” Martin said.

Some of his assistant coaches are still adjusting to it from a strategic standpoint during games, with one example being telling players to hold the ball for longer than the shot clock permits in the final minute of quarters.

“You can’t say ‘one shot’ with 41 seconds left, there’s a (35-second) shot clock,” Martin said. “I tell the players to go play.”

Unlike some of his coaching contemporaries around the state, he has extensive experience with the shot clock during other stretches of his career in different states and levels of competition.

In practice, his staff coaches situational basketball often, so this adaptation is just another wrinkle they have to review.

“The reality is the shot clock doesn’t really come into effect until later in the game,” Martin said.

So far this season, his team has done a good job of getting the ball out before the buzzer sounds, and their late-game operation when games are tight has just become an area of more focus.

He tells his players that the clock is irrelevant most of the time and that they’re going to run what they want to run because a shot-clock violation is not as detrimental of a penalty as others can be at times.

“It’s a dead-ball violation,” Martin said. “It’s better than throwing the ball to them and letting them make a layup, so we don’t sweat it. Our philosophy is that we’re not going to pay attention to the clock because we’re trying to score.”

This year’s edition of the East boys team doesn’t have the post presence it has had in recent seasons. The Thunderbirds are relying more on speed and efficient shooting, so in Martin’s mind, the last thing they have to worry about is the shot clock.

“We’re going to shoot the 3 and we’re going to play the full court and we’re going to take the first shot we get,” he said. “The last couple years when we haven’t been a great shooting team … With this group, you got to let them shoot because that’s probably the best shot we’re going to get (at winning).”

Outsider’s perspective

During last week’s Alaska Airlines Classic tournament at West Anchorage High School, head coaches of two of three boys teams from out of state that participated shared their thoughts on playing with a shot clock.

For Shelby Lewis and his Central High School team from Little Rock, Arkansas, it was “nothing new” and business as usual.

“We’ve been doing the shot clock for the last six years,” he said.

That wasn’t the case for Forest High School head coach Michael Hoffmann and his Wildcats from Ocala, Florida, who won the tournament.

Florida is one of the 18 states that does not mandate the use of a shot clock at the high school level. That won’t be the case for much longer, though, as it’s slated to join the other 32 states and the District of Columbia starting in the 2026-27 season.

“We love the shot clock,” Hoffmann said. “We’ve done it before because we travel a lot or try to.”

His team competed in a tournament in Tennessee last year that utilized the shot clock, and they experienced it on a couple different occasions this season prior to coming to Alaska.

“We want it because we’re a little bit of a quicker team and we’re hoping it gets installed next year,” Hoffmann said.

OATMAN, AZ (AZFamily) — This year marks the centennial of Route 66, 100 years since the highway connected Chicago to California through northern Arizona.

The so-called Mother Road played a significant role in shaping many of the towns in northern Arizona, including Oatman, where Route 66 helped transform a dying ghost town into a tourist destination.

Nestled in the mountains at the western edge of Arizona, Oatman has fewer than 100 residents but draws more than half a million visitors each year. People come for the mining history and the burros, but what saved this town from obscurity is that it sits on Route 66.

From gold boom to ghost town

Main Street Oatman is only about a quarter of a mile long, but it comes to life with old west gunfights, burros, and friendly locals.

Over a hundred years ago, it was a mining town and one of the highest producers of gold in the American West.

“Once that happened, everybody in the country knew there was gold here and that’s when the boom of Oatman actually started,” said local Mike Fox. “Route 66 went from mining area to mining area.”

Fox first moved to Oatman in 1986. He has worked as one of the local gunfighters and spent his time learning the town’s history.

Fox said Oatman’s boom lasted just a couple of decades. America’s focus shifted away from gold, and in 1951, Oatman and this stretch of Route 66 were bypassed.

“Once that happened, Oatman literally just died and became nothing but a wide spot in the road for the next 30 years,” Fox said.

Oatman fell on hard times, and its population dropped by thousands.

Route 66 resurrection

By the early 1990s, something was changing. Western movies had been shot in town, and an appreciation for the Mother Road resurfaced. Route 66 helped to resurrect the town.

“More and more people started traveling through Oatman and Oatman started coming back to life,” Fox said. “We actually sit on the longest stretch of Route 66.”

Now, more than 500,000 people visit Oatman each year from all over the world.

Julie Slayden is the owner of Julie’s Saloon. She said Oatman is now a Route 66 bucket list destination for tourists passing through.

“Julie’s Saloon, the sign out there is what they want a picture underneath so that’s one of their stops on the bucket list,” Slayden said. “You can have people on the bar tops from all over the place just having conversations with each other.”

Today, tourism is the town’s main economic driver, but Fox said it has taken a hit since the pandemic. He is hopeful this year’s Route 66 centennial will create another boom.

“It’s coming back and it will come back. It’s just a matter of time,” Fox said.

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Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and a coalition of environmental groups on Wednesday asked the U.S. Department of Energy to rescind its recent order requiring a coal-burning power plant in northwest Colorado to remain operational one day before it was scheduled to close. 

The aging Craig Station Unit 1 plant in Moffat County was slated to shut down at the end of 2025, but Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued an emergency order on Dec. 30 extending the plant’s life to March 30, and possibly later. 

The emergency order was issued under section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, which allows the Energy Department to keep power plants running during times of crisis, such as war or energy shortages. The move to keep the Craig plant open had been expected for weeks.

Weiser and the coalition of environmental groups, which includes the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, and Earthjustice — on behalf of GreenLatinos, Vote Solar, and Public Citizen — filed separate challenges with the department over its use of the emergency order, which both filings claim was illegal. 

Wright wrote in his emergency order that Colorado and other Western states face an energy “emergency” due to a “shortage of electric energy, a shortage of facilities for the generation of electric energy, and other causes.” 

The closure of coal-burning plants “could lead to the loss of power to homes,” Wright’s order states, as well as “businesses in the areas that may be affected by curtailments or power outages, presenting a risk to public health and safety.”

The Trump administration has used similar justifications under the Federal Power Act to keep open coal plants in Michigan and Washington, as well as an oil plant in Pennsylvania. 

Weiser, in a press release, said there is “no evidence of an energy emergency that would require keeping Craig Unit 1 open,” adding that the decision will “result in millions of dollars of unnecessary costs that could be passed on to rural households and businesses already struggling with high electricity bills.”

In their own press release, leaders from the environmental groups said that forcing the Craig plant to stay operational will both increase utility costs and negatively impact the environment. They said the emergency order also goes against the wishes of the plant’s owners. 

“Colorado communities, regulators, and utilities spent years planning a lawful, cost-effective transition away from coal,” said Vote Solar Regulatory Director for the West Kate Bowman. “Overriding that process at the eleventh hour erodes public trust and leaves families paying more for decisions made without their input.”

Craig Station Unit 1 is co-owned by Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a utility cooperative, alongside other energy providers, including Xcel Energy, the Platte River Power Authority and PacifiCorp. 

Tri-State originally decided to close the more than 40-year-old plant by the end of 2025 as part of its move to more environmentally friendly energy sources. It plans to close Craig Station’s two other coal-burning plants by 2028. 

The effort is partly driven by a state law that requires large-scale utility providers to reach 100% renewable electrical energy by 2050. Tri-State is also looking to close its plants and transition to other energy sources for economic reasons.

In a statement released in response to the emergency order in late December, Tri-State said Craig Station Unit 1 had been closed down even before the Dec. 30 order due to “a mechanical failure of a valve.”

Tri-State added that keeping the plant open “will likely require additional investments in operations, repairs, maintenance and, potentially, fuel supply, all factors increasing costs.”

Tri-State CEO Duane Highley said in a statement at the time that Tri-State ratepayers will “bear the costs of compliance with this order unless we can identify a method to share costs with those in the region. There is not a clear path for doing so, but we will continue to evaluate our options.” 

Both Wesier and the coalition of environmental groups, in their filing with the Energy Department, claim the department misused the Federal Power Act when it issued its emergency order and have presented no evidence of an energy emergency. 

The department must respond to the filing within 30 days. Environmental groups said they will challenge the order in court if the department declines to respond or denies their request to lift the order.

The fight over the future of the Craig power station also comes amid the backdrop of the Trump administration’s broader push to support more fossil fuel production. 

The U.S. The Environmental Protection Agency earlier this month rejected Colorado’s latest air-quality plan, saying that it violated federal law by forcing the closure of coal-fired power plants without the consent of plant operators. Gov. Jared Polis and Democratic lawmakers in Congress lambasted that decision.