High school

Hockey

Monday

Juneau-Douglas 4, Kodiak 3

Tuesday

Juneau-Douglas 6, Kodiak 1

North Pole 5, Tri-Valley 3

Monroe Catholic 5, Delta 4

Soldotna 2, Kenai Central 1

Palmer 6, Houston 1

South 6, Chugiak 2

West 3, Dimond 3

Wednesday

Dimond 5, Bartlett 1

Thursday

West Valley 7, Lathrop 2

Palmer 6, Homer 0

Service 9, Kenai Central 1

Friday

Delta 10, Tri-Valley 5

Wasilla 8, Colony 2

Palmer 2, North Pole 1

Houston 6, Monroe Catholic 1

Kodiak 3, Kenai Central 1

Juneau-Douglas 8, Homer 2

Chugiak 4, Soldotna 1

South 4, Eagle River 2

Saturday

Kodiak 6, Kenai Central 4

Delta 9, Tri-Valley 6

Houston 6, Monroe Catholic 2

Palmer 4, West Valley 3

Service 8, Colony 2

South 6, Dimond 1

• • •

Basketball

Girls

Monday

Kake 41, Skagway 22

Tuesday

Seward 54, Ninilchik 9

Tok 51, Glennallen 37

Kenai Central 73, Nikiski 33

Chugiak 52, East 31

Bartlett 82, South 21

Dimond 42, Eagle River 26

Colony 78, Sitka 11

Mountain City Christian Academy 65, Palmer 18

West 55, Monroe Catholic 39

Wednesday

Newhalen 56, Unalaska 29

Monroe Catholic 53, Sitka 27

Wasilla 50, Service 43

West 46, Colony 36

Thursday

Kake 49, Hoonah 38

Newhalen 71, King Cove 26

Colony 56, Monroe Catholic 23

Scammon Bay 61, Hooper Bay 38

Kenai Central 55, Eagle River 34

Juneau-Douglas 56, Grace Christian 50

Mountain City Christian Academy 75, Bartlett 54

Barrow 76, Kodiak 12

Soldotna 32, Ketchikan 25

Unalakleet 43, Bethel 33

Friday

Galena 47, West Valley 35

Meade River 72, Harold Kaveolook 28

Newhalen 49, Unalaska 28

Seward 70, Nikiski 19

Nunamiut 60, Harold Kaveolook 15

Nome-Beltz 32, South 28

Tuluksak 48, Akiak 44

Cordova 48, Effie Kokrine Charter 9

Saturday

West Valley 44, Jimmy Huntington 32

Shishmaref 57, Hogarth Kingeekuk Sr. Memorial 36

Tri-Valley 50, Lumen Christi 21

Seward 67, Susitna Valley 19

Kenai Central 58, Ketchikan 33

Nunamiut 58, Meade River 48

Service 71, Chugiak 55

Boys

Monday

Akiuk Memorial 100, Joann Alexie Memorial 72

Skagway 83, Kake 35

Tuesday

Ninilchik 72, Seward 65

Tok 47, Glennallen 42

Susitna Valley 67, Lumen Christi 43

Palmer 75, Mountain City Christian Academy 42

Chaputnguak 49, Kwigillingok 37

East 74, Chugiak 34

Dimond 100, Eagle River 22

Service 61, West 51

South 68, Bartlett 36

Kenai Central 80, Nikiski 43

Minto 84, Maudrey J Sommer 22

Wednesday

Chaputnguak 102, Paul T. Albert Memorial 25

Walter Northway 74, Glennallen 65

Nelson Island 94, Ayaprun 24

Unalaska 44, Sand Point 34

Thursday

West 60, Sitka 47

Scammon Bay 69, Ignatius Beans 28

Forest 56, West Valley 38

Kenai Central 77, Eagle River 27

King Cove 70, Manokotak 46

Mt. Edgecumbe 72, Kodiak 31

Central Arkansas Christian 67, Colony 63

Hoonah 46, Kake 45

Scammon Bay 68, Hooper Bay 44

East 73, Maine-Endwell 49

Ninilchik 47, Soldotna 40

Dillingham 75, Bristol Bay 40

Mountain City Christian Academy 52, Bartlett 51

Houston 72, Nikiski 36

Grace Christian 58, Barrow 52

Friday

Bristol Bay 53, Manokotak 45

Grace Christian 66, Mt. Edgecumbe 62

Ninilchik 60, Eagle River 38

Valdez 64, Hutchison 55

Bethel 69, North Pole 66

Juneau-Douglas 56, Ketchikan 44

Petersburg 58, Craig 25

Shaktoolik 74, Gambell 48

Soldotna 56, Kenai Central 48

West 55, East 50

Seward 70, Nikiski 38

Hoonah 54, Kake 51

Shishmaref 76, Hogarth Kingeekuk Sr. Memorial 41

Maine-Endwell (NY) 57, Sitka 56

West Valley 66, Colony 56

Saturday

Koliganek 62, Tanalian 54

Ninilchik 70, Kenai Central 61

Metlakatla 57, Wrangell 35

Shishmaref 85, Hogarth Kingeekuk Sr. Memorial 52

Valdez 38, Hutchison 31

Grace Christian 59, Kodiak 25

Chief Ivan Blunka 72, Bristol Bay 69

Seward 77, Susitna Valley 63

Scammon Bay 47, Emmonak 38

Colony 52, Sitka 40

West Valley 56, Maine-Endwell (NY) 48

• • •

Cross country skiing

Saturday

Lynx Loppet

Boys A

1. Vebjorn Flagstad 15:28.5, South; 2. Jack Leveque 15:34.6, Service; 3. Chase Laker 16:24.0, Kenai Central; 4. Gabriel Black 16:24.4, Colony; 5. Weston Sensabaugh 16:27.1, Colony; 6. Finn Dudley 16:29.3, West; 7. Freedom Bennett 16:30.9, Service; 8. Owen Harth 16:34.3, South; 9. Ethan Styvar 16:39.3, South; 10. Aksel Flagstad 16:39.7, South

Girls A

1. Solvej Lunoe 18:58.5, South; 2. Talia Smith 19:11.8, Service; 3. Calista Zuber 19:21.2, South; 4. Tania Boonstra 19:26.4, Soldotna; 5. Olivia Ronzio Pico 19:59.1, Chugiak; 6. Elin Lunoe 20:01.0, South; 7. Adah Decker 20:18.7, West Valley; 8. Olivia Soderstrom 20:39.2, West ; 9. Elliot Sensabaugh 20:40.1, Colony; 10. Clara Sensabaugh 20:58.1, Colony

• • •

College

Hockey

Friday

LIU 6, UAA 2

UAF 5, Lindenwood 2

Saturday

UAA vs. LIU (Late)

UAF vs. Lindenwood (Late)

• • •

Women’s basketball

Thursday

Seattle Pacific 101, UAA 98

Montana State Billings 86, UAF 45

Saturday

Seattle Pacific 69, UAF 56

UAA vs. Montana State Billings (Late)

• • •

Men’s basketball

Thursday

UAA 54, Seattle Pacific 50

Montana State Billings 90, UAF 72

Saturday

Seattle Pacific 82, UAF 75

UAA vs. Montana State Billings (Late)

• • •

NAHL

Friday

Kenai River Brown Bears 4, Anchorage Wolverines 3

Saturday

Anchorage Wolverines vs. Kenai River Brown Bears (Late)

• • •

Pacific Northwest IFSA Junior Freeride Regional 2

Day 1

U19 Ski Women

1. Zoie Sarten – Alyeska Freeride Team – 29.83

2. Kyla Gurry – Alyeska Freeride Team – 29.73

3. Emma Noffke – Alyeska Freeride Team – 28.60

4. Aslynn Thelen Durst – Alyeska Freeride Team – 27.17

5. Romilly Hinks – Alyeska Freeride Team – 27.07

U19 Ski Men

1. Cole Erickson – Alyeska Freeride Team – 34.60

2. Christian Laird – Alyeska Freeride Team – 33.80

3. Dean Haines – Alyeska Freeride Team – 33.57

4. Reuben Jeffers – Alyeska Freeride Team – 32.50

5. Kyler Porter – Alyeska Freeride Team – 32.07

U19 Snowboard Women

1. Saylor Howell – Alyeska Freeride Team – 25.40

U19 Snowboard Men

1. Caleb Pheley – Alyeska Freeride Team – 29.53

2. Jude Jeffers – Alyeska Freeride Team – 27.80

U15 Ski Women

1. Opal Gilmore – Alyeska Freeride Team – 29.13

2. Ariana Barber – Alyeska Freeride Team – 27.23

3. Alice Dann – Alyeska Freeride Team – 26.40

4. Vivian Koss – Alyeska Freeride Team – 25.63

5. Paityn Thelen Durst – Alyeska Freeride Team – 25.50

U15 Ski Men

1. Col Stiassny – Alyeska Freeride Team – 34.97

2. Reed Haines – Alyeska Freeride Team – 33.80

3. Logan Breeding – Alyeska Freeride Team – 31.20

4. Charlie Swift – Alyeska Freeride Team – 30.90

5. Levi Green – Alyeska Freeride Team – 30.80

U15 Snowboard Men

1. Isaac Gates – Alyeska Freeride Team – 28.23

2. Milo Gross – Alyeska Freeride Team – 24.87

3. Luxan Hoke – Alyeska Freeride Team – 22.67

U15 Snowboard Women

1. Caitlin Nasenbeny – Alyeska Freeride Team – 23.83

Day 2

U19 Ski Women

1. Penelope Garton-Barendregt – Alyeska Freeride Team – 29.90

2. Allie Ward – Stevens Pass Freeride Team (Washington) – 28.93

3. Zoie Sarten – Alyeska Freeride Team – 28.77

4. Ellison Hazen – Alyeska Freeride Team – 28.37

5. Liv Love – Alyeska Freeride Team – 28.13

U19 Ski Men

1. Reuben Jeffers – Alyeska Freeride Team – 34.70

2. Cole Erickson – Alyeska Freeride Team – 34.67

3. Henry Lantz – Alyeska Freeride Team – 34.37

4. Nathan Reitmeier – Alyeska Freeride Team

5. Harlan Loso – Independent – 33.57

U19 Snowboard Women

1. Saylor Howell – Alyeska Freeride Team – 27.73

U19 Snowboard Men

1. Jude Jeffers – Alyeska Freeride Team – 28.23

U15 Ski Women

1. Ariana Barber – Alyeska Freeride Team – 28.37

2. Arden Wailand – Alyeska Freeride Team – 27.93

3. Vivian Koss – Alyeska Freeride Team – 27.53

4. Finley Nasenbeny – Alyeska Freeride Team – 27.47

5. Paityn Thelen Durst – Alyeska Freeride Team – 27.33

U15 Ski Men

1. Carter Masneri – Alyeska Freeride Team – 32.73

2. Logan Breeding – Alyeska Freeride Team – 32.50

3. Patrick Greene – Alyeska Freeride Team – 30.53

4. Paul Munter – Alyeska Freeride Team – 29.90

5. Anakin Jessen – Alyeska Freeride Team – 29.23

U15 Snowboard Women

1. Caitlin Nasenbeny – Alyeska Freeride Team – 26.53

U15 Snowboard Men

1. Luxan Hoke – Alyeska Freeride Team – 28.00

U12 Ski Girls

1. Libby Wasson – Alyeska Freeride Team – 28.57

2. Arden Bressler – Alyeska Freeride Team – 28.47

3. Hadley Miller – Alyeska Freeride Team – 28.30

4. Pippa Creed – Team Give’r Freeride Club – 28.10

5. Brooke Long – Alyeska Freeride Team – 27.30

U12 Ski Boys

1. Corbin Glanville – Alyeska Freeride Team – 31.10

2. Samuel Jeffers – Alyeska Freeride Team – 30.43

3. Miles Donovan – Alyeska Freeride Team – 29.40

4. Jack Schnell – Alyeska Freeride Team – 29.23

5. Jacob Batove – Alyeska Freeride Team – 28.50

Joann Carl’s dog Rocky, a long-eared, short-legged mix the color of graham crackers, has become Alaska famous since I first met Carl in April. Over the past few months, she’s seen his photo all over Facebook, she said, rescued after Typhoon Halong wiped away more than half the homes in her coastal Alaska Native village of Kipnuk, population 700.  

At the Anchorage Daily News, we’re based in Alaska’s largest city but travel as often as we can to small communities like Kipnuk in an attempt to cover a state that’s twice the size of Texas. We try to report more than one story at a time to justify the expense of plane tickets. Flights to a remote village in a small plane cost the same as a trip to New York. But rarely do we have the chance to document a community just before the breaking news arrives. 

Maybe you didn’t hear much about the typhoon. It began as a tropical storm, dumping record rainfall in parts of Japan before swirling toward Alaska. By the time it reached our shores, the remnants of the storm still carried enough force to flood two villages, sweeping away homes and leaving as many as three people dead. 

I’m writing to you about the storm because photojournalist Marc Lester and I happened to visit Kipnuk shortly before the typhoon. Marc returned to cover the evacuation, providing a look at an Alaska village on the front lines of climate change just before and after the devastation.  

The story of destruction in Carl’s hometown, along with the nearby village of Kwigillingok, adds an exclamation point to long-simmering fears about the future of Alaska coastal villages. Which town will be wiped away next? Where will climate refugees live? Should their former homes be rebuilt? If not, what does it mean for the future of these communities? 

Emily Schwing, reporting for KYUK public radio in Bethel and ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, wrote in May about climate refugees the government helped relocate from the Yup’ik village of Newtok. In November, while covering Alaska’s crumbling public school infrastructure, she wrote how the school in Kipnuk housed hundreds of residents as an emergency shelter during the storm surge from Halong. 

When Marc and I first visited that schoolhouse in April, we were reporting on a very different kind of story. Justine Paul, Carl’s son, spent seven years in jail charged with murder in Alaska’s glacially slow justice system, where serious cases can take a decade to resolve. Paul’s case was ultimately dismissed after the evidence against him turned out to be deeply flawed. After struggling with addiction on the streets of Anchorage upon his release, Paul returned to live with Carl in the little Kipnuk house where he grew up.

Our visit to their village before the storm gave Marc a chance to document a version of Kipnuk that no longer exists and maybe never will again.

The people we met in the spring were subsequently airlifted to emergency shelter in an evacuation unlike any the state had experienced. They arrived in Bethel via helicopters and small planes. Some stayed in the regional hub. Others were packed shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor of a massive Alaska Air National Guard cargo plane bound for Anchorage. Many would end up staying for weeks in Anchorage at a convention center and a sports arena that had been transformed into emergency shelters. 

Five days after the storm, Marc toured Kipnuk on the back of an all-terrain vehicle with one of the village’s few holdouts. 

The floodwaters had devastated a community that’s been settling into melting permafrost like others on the coast. The central part of the village resembled a collapsed Jenga tower, rectangular homes scattered and strewn, Marc reported. Most were lifted from their pilings by the raging floodwater and deposited elsewhere. Some were surprisingly intact, but muddied, sodden, compromised and unlivable where they came to rest. Gone was the thrum and throttle of normal life we had seen earlier in the year, Marc found, replaced by an eerie vacancy.

It had taken Carl’s family five hours to travel the three blocks from their house to the makeshift shelter at the school when the storm first hit. Carl’s son Raymond helped elders get over debris on the ground. Pieces of houses washed against the town’s boardwalk. She said the whole village smelled of diesel fuel — spilled stove oil.

Villagers had to ration food that had been stored at the schoolhouse for students. “One cracker and a spoonful of hashbrowns” per person, Carl said. Eventually, volunteers salvaged dried Native foods from homes that were still standing: fish, berries, moose meat.

“We fed the kids more and the mens that were doing all the work, the rescues,” Carl said. 

A volunteer pilot flew Rocky from Kipnuk to safety, she said. “Used her own gas.” 

One house floated 15 miles away, Carl said. Bodies from some of Kipnuk’s aboveground graves had been seen near the town’s airport.

The storm, whose impacts the Alaska Climate Research Center later linked to global warming, killed 67-year-old Ella Mae Kashatok in Kwigillingok. The home she was in broke loose and floated toward the Bering Sea, state troopers said. Two members of her family, Vernon Pavil, 71, and Chester Kashatok, 41, have not been found.

Paul flew to Bethel and then to Togiak, a coastal village 140 miles from Kipnuk that was less impacted by the storms. Carl, who has diabetes, said she evacuated Kipnuk on a Blackhawk helicopter. She sat next to a 2-year-old girl whose name she didn’t know and who was traveling without her parents. Carl made a show of looking out the window and appearing interested in the scenery, she said, to keep the toddler occupied and calm.

Carl said Kipnuk’s subsistence culture made the villagers especially well-equipped to survive the aftermath of the storm. Hunters regularly face life-and-death decisions, she said. Starvation times weren’t so long ago. Elders taught everyone to dry and save food.

Carl, however, is not likely to be around to experience that way of life in the village anymore.

Although her home is one of the few that survived — it was built in the late 1970s or early ’80s on pilings moored deep in the tundra — she’s not optimistic about returning to the village full time. 

She burst into tears when asked if Kipnuk will exist in the future. 

“It’s probably the end,” she said over a recent lunch of Whoppers at an Anchorage Burger King. “It’s a ghost town.”

Eight cross-country skiers from Alaska are going to the 2026 Olympics in Italy next month. U.S. Ski and Snowboard announced the team Thursday morning.

Alaskans make up one half of the 16-skier U.S. cross-country ski team. All eight of the athletes ski with Alaska Pacific University’s team in Anchorage. APU coach Erik Flora said it’s unusual for so many cross-country skiers on Team USA to come from one state, and one club. He said APU is one of the biggest, strongest ski clubs in the country.

Flora said the team has been steadily improving over the last decade. This year, he said, it’s very likely that Alaskans will bring home some medals for the United States.

Gus Schumacher, Hunter Wonders, Zanden McMullen and JC Schoonmaker are skiing for the U.S. men’s team.

Rosie Brennan, Kendall Kramer, Novie McCabe and Hailey Swirbul are skiing for the U.S. women’s team.

It’s Gus Schumacher’s second Olympics. He said the skiers themselves already knew who’d made it since the criteria is pretty clear, but he’s glad the news is out.

“Fun to share with everyone, officially,” he said. “Nice to tell people and just being sure about it.”

He’s feeling good, he said, because he thinks this year he and his teammates have a real chance to help Team USA bring home a men’s cross-country medal. The only other time the U.S. men’s team medaled at the Olympics was 50 years ago, in 1976. Earlier Friday, Schumacher earned a third-place podium result in a World Cup relay sprint race with teammate Ben Ogden in Switzerland.

“It’s exciting to be feeling good, and have a big opportunity to do something that hasn’t been done in a long time,” he said. “And yeah, it’s exciting. It’s a little daunting, but just got to go there and experience it and realize how lucky we are to be able to do this.”

It’s 37-year-old Rosie Brennan’s third Olympics. But this year is different for her. Brennan has been struggling with what she calls “mysterious health issues” for over a year.

Now, she’ll have what is likely her last chance to compete in the Olympics, she said. It’s bittersweet, since she had hoped to contend for medals in Cortina but she said that’s not her reality anymore. Now, she’d just love to have a race where she feels like herself again.

“It’s been a long time since I felt like the Rosie I’m accustomed to racing with for the last 15 years,” she said.

There were times she wasn’t sure she was even going to make it to this year’s Olympics.

Now that she’s going, she’s thankful her teammates are with her, helping her stay focused.

“They’re the people that have seen everything that I’ve gone through and have been there to help me through it,” she said. “So that just gives you such a sense of comfort on the road, and especially like in big events like the Olympics.”

Hailey Swirbul didn’t have a straight path to the Olympics this year either. She quit skiing in 2023 because she wanted to experience life outside a stressful ski racing career – she was burned out.

Then, this summer, she started coaching for APU. She was skiing and feeling strong and thinking about the limited time she has to do the things she loves. The idea of competing at the Olympics bumped around in her head for a few months until she eventually decided: Let’s do it, take the risk, go for something big.

But she said she’s thinking about the Olympics differently than she did when she competed four years ago in Beijing. Taking a couple years away from competitive racing has really given her a perspective about what’s important in life.

“Sports are important but what really matters is the people that you know are there through the ups and downs,” she said.

She’s talking about her teammates, and friends and family, but also her role coaching at APU.

When the news came out that she’d made the Olympic team, a big group of her middle school skiers made a video for her, cheering and chanting her name. She said it made her heart swell when she got it.

They inspire her to work harder, she said. The real inspiration in an endurance sport like cross-country skiing comes from seeing someone’s grit, she said. It comes from watching athletes as they dig deep to push through the suffering.

“Those kids are watching and they notice and they pay attention,” she said. “And I think it’s so important to try to lead by example with your effort.”

This year, she said, her goal at the Olympics is to race in a way that inspires the kids back home.