(Rashah McChesney/Chilkat Valley News) More than 100 people gathered to watch a “beach wrestling” match on Saturday, July 27, 2024, at at the Southeast Alaska State Fair in Haines, Alaska. Entrants paid a small fee to compete and the proceeds went toward new mats for the high school regional tournament in December.
The sandy area next to the Klondike Stage at the fairgrounds is technically an outdoor volleyball court. But on Friday afternoon at the Southeast Alaska State Fair about 100 spectators gathered to watch nearly two dozen people compete in something else – beach wrestling.
“It’s loosely based on USA beach wrestling,” said Haines middle school wrestling coach Jake Mason. Mason raked the uneven sand inside of the circular rope that served as the wrestling ring.
“So it’s one point for a push out, which is when you take a wrestler beyond the rope, and then it’s two points for a takedown.” Mason said. He was one of two referees for the bracketed style tournament.
“We’re calling it a ‘takedown’ when the initiating wrestler gets the opposing wrestler to take a knee or another part of the body down into the sand, … and that’s basically it,” he said.
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The wrestlers start from neutral – that is they stand and face each other before the referee’s starting whistle blasts.
The wrestlers were scored primarily on takedowns, and there were no pins – so it was nonstop action.
The event was hosted by the Haines Glacier Bears wrestling team. Competitors paid to enter, $25 for adults and $15 for youth. The money raised will go toward purchase of new wrestling mats for the next high school wrestling season. The team is scheduled to host its regional tournament in December.
There were no weight classes but wrestlers were grouped by three categories – 14 and under boys, women, and men aged 15 and up. It was a single elimination tournament, so the winner of each match moved on. Each match consisted of two, two-minute periods, said Mason.
“With a short maybe about 10 [to] 15 second break in between,” Mason said.
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Mason was not only a referee but he also competed in the adult men’s division. He lost to 18-year-old Jackson Long.
“I was surprised the first one was against my coach. I’ve been beat up by him hundreds, maybe thousands of times. But I beat him for the first time this [past] spring,” said Long, who has been wrestling since he was 12.
“That was maybe my second time [beating him],” he said.
Long is a recent Haines High School graduate who started wrestling in sixth grade when it was first offered as a sport at the middle school.
He wrestled four matches to win this year’s beach wrestling. Long also placed third in his weight class during the state tournament this year and said he is passionate about wrestling.
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“I think it’s the greatest sport for anyone to learn discipline and hard work and grit. And it’s the most challenging sport, of course. So I recommend everyone try it,” he said.“Nothing is gonna make you grow as a person as much as wrestling does.”
Long is going to Fairbanks for aviation mechanics school but he still wants his former team to succeed.
“We have the opportunity to host regionals this year. And [it would] really help us host more tournaments here if we had a great facility… and new mats,” he said. “I think any donations to get new mats and put on an awesome regional tournament would just be huge for the town.”
Twelve-year-old Lylah Wray has only been wrestling for a year but she was not afraid to test her mettle.
“I wrestled an adult –one of my friend’s moms,” Wray said. She lost that match-up. “I definitely would’ve liked it if I scored a couple of points, but I think it’s okay.”
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Wray was tired after back-to-back matches but that didn’t dampen her spirit.
“It was kind of like sumo wrestling but not really. My knees couldn’t touch the ground. It was definitely not normal wrestling, but I think it was still fun,” she said.
Wray said her older brother got her into wrestling.
“I want to wrestle in college,” said the seventh-grader. “I love wrestling and I love the sport. More than anything,” she said. “You have to have a lot of mental toughness to do it. So I think no one is going to be that great when they first start to do wrestling. It depends on how long you do it. So definitely try to stay in it.”
The first Jesuit missionaries in Alaska sailed up the Yukon River in 1887. By the turn of the 20th century, the religious order of the Catholic Church had as many as 50 Jesuits in the state.
Now, only two remain. And by the end of June, there will be none.
The Jesuits’ nearly 140 years in the state was honored at an event at Bethel’s Immaculate Conception Church on June 16. A procession of priests wearing long white gowns with red hems walked down the aisle to open the event. The Bishop of the Diocese of Fairbanks, Stephen Maekawa, thumped the ground with a shimmering silver staff known as a clozier as he approached the altar.
Bishop of the Diocese of Fairbanks, Steven Maekawa, walks toward the altar at the Immaculate Conception Church in Bethel.
“My brothers and sisters, we gather together to celebrate this wonderful and blessed occasion to acknowledge the love of God and the work of God through the 139 year mission of the Society of Jesus of the Jesuit fathers,” Maekawa said to open the event.
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A traditional Catholic mass followed, with readings in both English and Yup’ik. During the sermon, Maekawa acknowledged the vastness of the Fairbanks diocese, and the tremendous amount of work done by the Jesuits to establish it.
“All of the 46 churches of the Diocese of Fairbanks that we currently have were established by either the Jesuit fathers or by direction of a Jesuit bishop,” Maekawa said. “We have a long history of the Society of Jesus’ presence and ministry here in all of Alaska.”
The Jesuits are an order within the Catholic Church, akin to the Dominicans or Franciscans. They have a reputation for taking on some of the Catholic Church’s most remote assignments.
That missionary spirit brought the Jesuits to the Yukon River in 1887, where they built churches, schools, and ministries. Without their work, Catholicism may not have taken root in huge swaths of Alaska, particularly among Alaska Native communities.
The Immaculate Conception Church in Bethel.
But the Jesuits leave a complicated legacy. Their methods of converting Native people to the religion, particularly in the first half of the 20th century, created generational traumas still felt to this day.
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Fr. Sean Carroll is the provincial of the Jesuits West Province, which oversees Alaska and nine other states.
Fr. Sean Carroll, provincial of the Jesuits West Province, speaks at an event recognizing nearly 140 years of Jesuit service in Alaska.
“Thank you for all that you have taught us about who Jesus is and how to love and serve Him wholeheartedly,” Carroll said. “I also thank you for your patience with us. For there have been times when we have sinned and when we have hurt you.”
Missionaries, including the Jesuits, forcefully converted and assimilated Alaska Native people into Western culture and religion. Students at Jesuit-run boarding schools were forced to abandon their Native languages and physically punished when caught speaking languages other than English. Native dancing and drumming were also banned.
The Jesuits West Province maintains a list of 150 Jesuits with credible claims of sexual abuse against minors or vulnerable adults. A quarter of the accused Jesuits served in Alaska at some point in time.
“I ask for your forgiveness for all that we have done that was not rooted in Christ and love for Him, and for when we did not value your culture nor recognize the presence of God in you,” Carroll said.
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Carroll gave the order to withdraw from the state last spring. A big issue was the recruitment of Jesuits willing to travel and serve in remote villages. He told the congregation that the Jesuits’ work would continue, just without a permanent presence.
Fr. Rich Magner, one of the two remaining Jesuit priests in Alaska, attends a ceremony in Bethel.
Fr. Rich Magner is one of the two remaining Jesuit priests in Alaska. His last day serving Chevak, Hooper Bay, and Scammon Bay is June 30.
“We all always knew coming in, or should have known, that we’re not going to be here forever. It’s going to be mission accomplished at some point,” Magner said. “And then we hand it off to the diocese that we’ve helped create, and so that’s a good feeling.”
Magner’s next stop is a Clinical Pastoral Education residency in Tacoma, Washington.
The other remaining priest, Fr. Tom Provinsal, first came to Alaska in 1968 to teach. A fond memory, he said, was meeting Elders that practiced traditional subsistence lifestyles.
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“Some of the grandmothers, their fingers were just all bent with arthritis and stuff like that, you know, their whole lives they’ve been working out in the cold and the wet, doing food, sewing, all that kind of stuff,” Provinsal said. “I’d say I just feel very privileged to have come when I did come and to see that.”
Provinsal returned in 1975 as a priest and has served in the region ever since. After moving away, he plans to take a five month sabbatical. What happens next, he said, is in God’s hands.
Two lines formed in the aisle for communion at the end of the mass. After taking communion, Bethel’s Parish Administrator Susan Murphy gave a final thank you.
“It’s difficult to say goodbye to people who have been a part of our lives for so long,” Murphy said. “We know that you have done what was yours to do, and have taught us to do what is ours to do. We are grateful.”
Jesuit priests form a row along the altar of Bethel’s Immaculate Conception Church as members of the congregation lift their arms and pray.
Dominic Hunt, a Yup’ik deacon that flew in from Emmonak for the event, led the congregation through a final prayer.
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“Bless them with your wisdom, that they may be a word of hope, a world in need. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen,” Hunt said.
About 70 people posed for a photo on the altar – priests, deacons, parishioners, Elders and children — many of them smiling, some standing quietly.
The photo doesn’t tell the whole story. But it’s a moment when gratitude, grief, and memory all shared the same room.
Bishop of the Diocese of Fairbanks, Steven Maekawa, stands in the middle of a crowd waiting to take a photo at Bethel’s Immaculate Conception Church.
JUNEAU, Alaska (KTUU) – The Supreme Court of Alaska will be taking up the case of the State of Alaska, Division of Elections v. Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr.
The oral arguments will be held Monday at 10 a.m. via Zoom, according to an order and opening notice.
The document also specifies that a decision is expected to be made before noon on Tuesday.
According to documents from the Division of Elections, the state must start printing ballots at noon on the same day.
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This comes after an Anchorage Superior Court Judge ordered Dan J. Sullivan on to the ballot Friday.
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