Category: News Feeds

Klukwan Chilkats take master’s bracket

At some point in his life, some time before tip-off Saturday, Andrew Friske forgot how to miss a shot. For four quarters in the Gold Medal masters’ bracket championship, the memory never came back. 

It was shooting, shooting, and more shooting from Klukwan’s lineup of Gold Medal hall-of-famers, who didn’t see a close game all tournament. Friske, a Haines High alum,  spent the game hardly touching the rim with his shots. Alongside him, 2026 Hall of Fame inductee Dave Buss shot well, as did Stuart DeWitt and Jason Shull.

The game started with Klukwan’s Jordan Baumgartner winning the tip-off — a somewhat rare occurrence for a team’s point guard to be taking a job usually reserved for the tallest player. It was a sign of things to come, with Klukwan’s perimeter players playing at a different speed than their Sitka counterparts. 

In the first quarter, Sitka was hardly able to get a foothold on the Klukwan side of the floor. Michael Ganey in particular swiped a series of steals, as did Baumgartner and Friske. 

That trio was everywhere, crashing the boards from the perimeter and even taking matchups down low. Sitka made an effort to work the ball inside to their big men, but the Klukwan perimeter players, giving up plenty of size, swatted a number of low-post attempts. 

Outside those three, Klukwan sent in wave after wave of crafty players, who had all played together before on Gold Medal teams. Hall of Famers Shull and Jesse McGraw checked into the game and helped dictate the flow of the offense. McGraw in particular gave Klukwan an inside presence who was comfortable stepping outside to distribute the ball and shoot. McGraw’s passing was a boon for Haines’ athletic perimeter scorers. 

After all, the Friske backdoor cut is something McGraw said he’s been looking for since they were in high school. 

“Stuart and Andrew were juniors when I was a senior in high school,” McGraw said after the game. “That’s when I started playing with them and it’s still the same. They do the same moves on the court, I know where to find them. Stuart’s the spot-up shooter, Andrew is the back-cutter.”

By the end of the third quarter, Klukwan had all but wrapped up the game with a 62-37 lead.

Klukwan closed out their scoring with a Jeffrey Klanott three, winning 74-52.

Coach Dan Hotch said the team’s run through the tournament came from their shooting, but also the shared experience. “This is the love of the game,” Hotch said. “I coached 22 years of high school basketball in Oregon, but it all started right here.” 

Friske led the scoring with 25 points, Ganey contributed 12, Baumgartner 8, Shull 8, Buss, 8, DeWitt 7, McGraw 3, and Klanott 3. 

For Sitka, Derek James scored 14 points, Jimmie Jensen 10, Jeremy Plank 10, Efren Arce 5, Cliff Ritcher 4, Thomas Anderson 4, Steve Edenshaw 3, Justin Bagley 2.

Ganey and DeWitt were named to the master’s bracket All-Tournament Team alongside Friske, the master’s bracket most valuable player. 

Deishu Merchants take B bracket

“Bigger, better, more athletic,” was how Haines Merchants coach Steve Fossman described the Angoon team across from him Saturday night in Juneau. 

To that point, no one had been able to make anything stick on the Merchants, Haines’ B Bracket team. But being undefeated was a challenge unto itself, said Gold Medal hall of famer and master’s bracket MVP Andrew Friske. By Friske’s estimation, in the tournament’s history the one-loss team in the championship game had beaten the undefeated team roughly 70% of the time. 

From the tip, Friske’s warning looked prophetic. For the first time all tournament, Haines struggled with ball pressure and couldn’t free-up its playmakers. 

The packed, mostly pro-Angoon gym didn’t give Haines’ slow start much grace, and neither did Angoon’s Clayton Edwin. Edwin kicked off scoring with a clean three-pointer, and then a four-point play the next trip down the court after being fouled. A third Edwin three, this time tossed up as he was falling over, had the crowd in rapture with hardly five minutes gone. That gave Angoon an 18-7 lead.

When Edwin finally spent a possession not making a three, Angoon’s Kendrick Payton was the first player at the tournament to make Haines’ Tyler Swinton look small, scoring an early bucket easily on the block. 

Amid the Angoon run, Haines matched Angoon’s physicality and avoided turning the ball over. That left Haines in a position to make a run of their own when Angoon’s hot shooting cooled. In the closing minutes of the quarter, a flurry of three-pointers from veterans Swinton and Kyle Fossman brought Haines back to just a one-point deficit. 

From there on out, it was three quarters of both teams trading blows and the lead. 

The second quarter featured more impressive shotmaking from Edwin. Even so, it was Angoon’s star point guard Aquino Brinson who remained the tempo-setter of the offense. Brinson was cool under on-ball pressure from Haines’ backcourt that had been effective all tournament. Brinson was frequently able to probe in, get a bigger defender switched on to him, pull the ball back out, and then make a play. 

Brinson and Edwin’s combined efforts, plus inside scoring from Tajuan Jamestown, gave Angoon a five-point lead at the end of the half. 

In the second half, Haines got the same reliable minutes from top contributors it had all tournament. Angoon split defensive duties on Swinton between the bigger Payton and the far smaller Jonathan Jack-Nixon. Swinton handled the diverse looks well, able to alternate scoring inside and outside depending on the matchup. 

Fossman continued his steady outside shooting and playmaker role, finding the ball anytime the offense was unsettled. Often, he would bide his time down low, letting the younger guards handle the ball, before popping out and spraying the ball to an open shooter. 

Helping keep the Merchants in the game were big moments from smaller-minutes players, like James Hart who hit a corner three to end a brief Haines scoring drought, and Chevy Fowler who stood in for a charge on Brinson. 

Steve Fossman specifically cited the contributions of Ryan Olsen who in particular contributed tough rebounding. “Always in the right place,” Fossman said Olsen. 

As is Gold Medal custom, it was largely laissez-faire refereeing. Generally, if you were going up at the rim you could expect to go down, hard. At one point, tensions sparked with Jack-Nixon getting tangled up with Combs, Haines’ smallest player, and then Fossman getting nose to nose with Jack-Nixon to defend his younger teammate. A tough bucket from Fossman resulted in a steady stream of jawing back down the court. 

It was a credit to both teams that even with jawing and a raucous crowd, offense remained clean and organized. It was fitting that the third quarter ended tied, 43-43. 

For the fourth, it was in the sure hands of Brinson that Angoon placed most of its trust. His secure ballhandling and cool demeanor was a match for the moment, and he was able to draw fouls and score at the line. 

The score remained knotted, with multiple ties and lead changes — neither team able to separate. 

For nearly the whole quarter, Haines ran a lineup that included its youngest players, high-school senior Colton Combs and recent Mt. Edgecumbe grad Jake Friske. Both continued to seek out the ball, taking risks while avoiding turnovers. 

Friske had debuted on the team last year, but played a smaller role off-ball. Then he broke his foot mid-tournament. 

This year, he was tasked with more primary ballhandling duties. Earlier in the tournament, with the ball in his hands, his instincts from playing college intramural ball kicked in, he said. That had earned him an earful in the huddle from the older guys. 

“I started kind of doing whatever, and when we got into the huddle they were yelling at me, telling me to slow it down,” Friske said.

“Kyle (Fossman) pulled me aside at the end of the game and told me he’d start trusting me more. And I understood my role on this team was to take care of the ball and play good defense.” 

Both he and Combs did just that, seemingly constantly on the floor diving for loose balls. 

Friske had another role to play as the game wound down. After a clutch bucket from Tompkins, Angoon had the ball down two with 25 seconds left. For seemingly the first time, Brinson made an error: Haines’ perimeter pressure prevented him from getting into the paint, and then he turned the ball over. 

After losing possession, Angoon was left in a position of having to foul to stop the clock.

That sent Friske to the line, two different times, to ice the game. 

When asked after about the pressure of the moment, Friske said he’d seen it before. “I was actually fine there,” he said afterward. “It wasn’t that loud, honestly. We won in overtime in Barrow my senior year and it was way louder there.”

Friske sank four straight free-throws to give Haines their winning margin of victory, 57-51. 

It’s Haines’ fourth Gold Medal B Bracket title. Between young blood like Friske and Combs, former big-name Southeast high-school stars Fossman and Tompkins, old Haines High contributors like Kyle Rush, Hart, Olsen, and Fowler. 

“I knew all these guys were good because I’ve played against all of them,” said Tompkins, the newcomer. “It’s nice to play with them. We’ll be back next year.” 

For Haines, scoring leaders were Swinton with 23, Fossman 13, Friske 9, Tompkins 7, Hart 3, and Combs 2. 

For Angoon, Edwin led with 24, Brinson 12, Tajuan Jamestown 9, and Payton 6. 

Swinton and Tompkins made the all-tournament team alongside tournament MVP Kyle Fossman. 

The post Chilkat Valley Sweep: Haines and Klukwan take home Gold Medal titles appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

As someone who was lucky to succeed through foster care, it’s hard to watch a neglected foster care system that allows so much damage to Alaska’s most neglected children. Alarmingly, the state has chosen to violate the most important of the comprehensive foster care reforms the Alaska State Legislature passed, across party lines, in 2018. Those reforms added studied, state-of-the-art practices to improve youth health and success.  

Fortunately, right now many legislators are asking questions. The current version of the House Finance Subcommittee budget responsibly fixes much of what’s broken at the Office of Children’s Services, which runs the state’s foster care system. A huge amount of what needs to be done can be directed by the Legislature, which is debating the budget right now.  

Today Alaska foster children, already agonized by being taken from their parents, sometimes find themselves sleeping in OCS offices. Some wait for a home in lonely motel rooms. That’s because OCS lost almost 500 foster homes since 2018.

The state is required by law to actively recruit foster families in “times of shortage.” This ongoing shortage has demanded action for years. Many of the best families have quit out of frustration. OCS has done little to let Alaskans know they need help.  

Doing the work to advertise the dire need for foster families is a first step. But it’s just a small part of fixing a system that will create as many scars as we allow it to.  

Here are a few of the gold standard practices OCS still doesn’t follow eight years later.    

The evidence is clear we should replace “traditional foster care” whenever possible with loving extended family placements. Familiar relatives and responsible family friends make the best foster parents when that’s safe. Youth don’t suffer as much trauma being placed with people who already love them. 

In 2018 many caseworkers weren’t doing comprehensive, detailed work to identify and work with family members to take in foster youth. The law now requires OCS supervisors to meet with caseworkers to confirm, in writing, that the hard work to achieve family placements has occurred. If not, the supervisor must make sure the work gets done. 

It’s been eight years. OCS is still violating this important provision. 

State auditors stated in a recent audit of the department that OCS leadership should ensure supervisors “certify in writing whether OCS staff has searched for an appropriate placement with a relative or family friend as required by law.” 

OCS argues they do better than many other states on family placement. That’s both possible and irrelevant to illegal OCS conduct. If we want to cherry-pick statistics, let’s also note that after an encouraging increase in family placements for one year after the reforms passed, with strong OCS support at the time, today we place 150 fewer youth with relatives than in 2019, according to state data. The reality is most states do poorly on foster care work. Comparing bad apples to bad apples isn’t much of a goal.  

It’s undeniable that if OCS followed the law, more relative homes would be found, more youth would live with loving families, and fewer youth would live in hotel rooms and OCS offices.     

Here’s the root of OCS’s dysfunction. 

In 2020, OCS argued it was faced with a shortage of qualified caseworkers. If so, it had two choices. One was to pay what the market demanded to attract professional workers for complex work. The chosen, reckless option was to eliminate all professional job requirements to keep pay as low as possible. That decision came from somewhere between OCS and the Governor’s office.

We came to a fork in the road and chose the one with the impassable ruts. 

Today, a caseworker doesn’t need any relevant work experience, or any social work, master’s or any college degree, to be hired. A recent high school graduate can be hired if they’ve never had a full-time job. That has reportedly happened. In 2018, 80% of caseworkers had a college or master’s degree in social work. Today that’s 50% of caseworkers, officials with OCS told senators at a presentation on Mar. 24.  

That means half of child welfare case workers now working in Alaska do not have relevant professional or academic degrees. 

The complex work of deciding whether to separate a family, how to put that family back together, how to get help for a traumatized child, and convince relatives to take a child into their home is not for someone without qualifications, at poor pay. It’s not fair to well-meaning caseworkers, roughly half of whom quit within a year. 

The number of case workers leaving the job has remained high since 2019, with 45% quitting last year. 

The centerpiece of the 2018 reforms was a requirement that caseworkers carry an average of 13 or fewer cases. That’s an evidence-based, crucial tool to reduce burnout and turnover, and allow caseworkers the time to do real social work. Instead, OCS wastes money to train people who quit, and to pay overtime to the overburdened workers who remain. 

Today, the average caseload is double what’s legal at OCS’s largest office in Anchorage, and 50% higher than what’s legal statewide.  

The 2018 reform law also requires six weeks of comprehensive training for new case workers. To cut the training budget, OCS has replaced much of the comprehensive in-person training with ineffective Zoom meetings.    

State auditors questioned the training time in their 2024 audit, and a state legislative consultant  rightly called the job qualifications and training reductions “woefully insufficient” to protect children.

This year we should implement the reforms we’ve already passed, hopefully across party lines again.