State basketball tournament starts Thursday without Region V champion Juneau-Douglas
Mar. 24—The Class 4A state basketball tournament will begin Thursday in the Valley without the Juneau-Douglas Crimson Bears, a senior-laden team with one of the best records in Alaska.
Their season ended Saturday with a convincing victory over Ketchikan that pushed their record to 16-1 and earned them the Region V boys championship.
The team had to turn down a state tournament berth because of Juneau School District policy regarding travel during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ketchikan, the Region V runner-up, will represent the Southeast region when play begins Thursday at four schools throughout the Valley.
News that the region champs won't be going to state traveled quickly on social media, and many people wrote or called the Juneau School District in protest. In response, the district issued a statement Tuesday explaining its travel policy.
"The school district has an obligation to take steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19," it said in part. "The current COVID-19 risk status in Anchorage and the MatSu Borough is simply too high to approve travel to those areas at this time."
Mat-Su, which will host this week's Class 4A and 3A tournaments and next week's Class 2A and 1A tournaments, is considered high risk by the state of Alaska. So is Anchorage, the original site of the tournaments until the Alaska School Activities Association moved them in mid-February after Anchorage released an emergency order that prohibited out-of-town teams from playing indoor sports in the city.
Coach Robert Casperson said he and his team knew all along about the Juneau School District's travel policy, but they are heartbroken all the same.
"This wasn't sprung upon us," he said Tuesday. "We talked about it with the kids going into regions. We told them all we could do was play our best. We were hoping beyond hope that something would change. When I started hearing that other communities in Southeast had the opportunity to travel, I thought there might be a chance for us.
"We're obviously disappointed."
Eight of the team's 15 players are seniors, and five of them posted a video on Twitter asking for support, and it attracted thousands of views and several shares since Sunday.
"We hope this is not a lost cause," one of them said.
Despite their plea, the Crimson Bears won't be at the state tournament. Players have been invited to play in an AAU tournament in California this week, Casperson said, and "all 15 of them said they want to go and participate," he said.
"I'm all for it. I hope they go down there and have a blast."
Casperson said people from Region V in Southeast and Region VI in Fairbanks reached out to ASAA "and proposed hosting the tournament in Fairbanks or Juneau.'
"Those were non-starters," he said.
Billy Strickland, ASAA's executive director, said Fairbanks is also a high-risk area according to the state of Alaska's COVID-19 metrics. "Kenai is the only place on the road system not at high alert," he said Tuesday.
Casperson said the Juneau district's policy has been in place for months; earlier this school year, it prevented the Juneau-Douglas hockey team from playing in the Division II state tournament in Mat-Su.
He wishes the policy could have been reviewed and possibly adapted as the school year went on.
"It's not a new policy ... but I also believe it was a plan that was enacted before the vaccine and before we had played 17 games and traveled successfully. The hope was that they would look at a more current reality."
Players could have quarantined after returning home, Casperson said — online classes are planned anyway for the first week after spring break.
"But the fact remains, the Mat-Su Valley has the highest rates of COVID in our state and the lowest rates of vaccination in our state," he said. "... It comes down to ASAA moving the tournament to the Mat-Su Valley. That one factor is hard to get by."
On Monday, the Crimson Bears held one final practice. They played their annual "Has Beens vs. Will Bes" game — seniors vs. everyone else — and they cut down the net, a ceremony they didn't get to do Saturday night after winning the Region V title in Ketchikan because they had to get to the airport.
"It provided a little bit of closure," Casperson said.
Still, the Crimson Bears won't get an opportunity to contend for a state title or showcase Player of the Year candidate Cooper Kriegmont, who poured in 42 points in the Region V title game against Ketchikan, an effort that ties him with the great Carlos Boozer for second place on the school's list of single-game scoring leaders.
"We knew the day was coming for the end of the season, but it didn't hurt any less, the finality of it," Casperson said. "They're going to look back on one of the most successful seasons in Crimson Bears history."
ASAA March Madness state championships
Thursday's first-round games
Class 4A boys at Palmer High School
3 p.m. — East Anchorage vs. South Anchorage
4:45 p.m. — West Valley vs. Wasilla
6:30 p.m. — Ketchikan vs. Chugiak
8:15 p.m. — Colony vs. West Anchorage
Class 4A girls at Wasilla High
3 p.m. — Bartlett vs. Palmer
4:45 p.m. — Ketchikan vs. East Anchorage
6:30 p.m. — Colony vs. West Anchorage
8:15 p.m. — Lathrop vs. Diamond
Class 3A boys at Colony High
3 p.m. — Anchorage Christian vs. Valdez
4:45 p.m. — Mt. Edgecumbe vs. Kotzebue
6:30 p.m. — Nome vs. Delta Junction
8:15 p.m. — Monroe Catholic vs. Grace Christian
Class 3A girls at Palmer Middle School
3 p.m. — Sitka vs. Kenai Central
4:45 p.m. — Monroe Catholic vs. Nome
6:30 p.m. — Kotzebue vs. Valdez
8:15 p.m. — Anchorage Christian vs. Homer
