A team of eight Haines women, seven of them mothers of little ones, earned their way to the championship game last week in Juneau’s Lions Club Gold Medal Basketball Tournament. The team came from behind, bruised but unbeaten, to compete in a David vs. Goliath championship. The Haines women ended up taking silver against a team of speedy collegiate sharpshooters.
It was the 75th year of the Gold Medal Basketball tournament, making it the oldest Lion’s Club event in the world.
Haines sent three men’s teams and one women’s team. The men’s teams were divided into different brackets based mainly on age, but there was only one women’s bracket.
Alisa Beske played post for Haines.
“We were definitely a senior team,” Beske said. “The Prince of Wales girls were all really young. I think one of them was a year out of high school. The girl that got MVP who was an amazing shooter. But, yeah, they definitely were young. But we ran with them. I was pretty proud of us.”
Despite being pitted against younger teams, it was the Haines women’s team who brought home the only trophy for the Chilkat Valley.
The team, made up of Melissa Ganey, Fran Daly, Hannah Mason, Stoli Lynch, Carly Spud, Amanda Painter, Alisa Beske and Kari Johnson organized a Sunday night league over the winter. They played pickup games, touching the ball at least once a week. Most of the team played together in the Dick Hotch Tournament in Haines last month. And all the players except Johnson and Mason have played together in Gold Medal in previous years. But the women hadn’t fielded a team since the Juneau tournament resumed post-Covid.
They practiced all winter, and they had their sights on Gold Medal as an end-of-season goal.
The team left Haines on the Sunday ferry. They arrived in time for their first game – a 9:00 p.m. match against Angoon. It was a blowout. Haines won 53-37.
On Monday, the women played Yakutat. A ten-point victory kept them in the winner’s bracket, giving the team two day’s rest before facing Prince of Wales on Thursday.
During the rest days, the team kept trying to meet up and talk about the games. But they were never able to coordinate a team talk – most of the women had brought their kids to Juneau and they’re all different ages, with different schedules and some would be napping while others were playing.
But Beske told KHNS that despite the challenges of traveling with kids, the family atmosphere is part of what makes the Gold Medal so special, and so fun.
“My son Eddy was there,” Beske said. “And he learned to clap when everyone else clapped. And to say, ‘Score!’”
Haines player Lisa Shove, whose father is a tournament Hall of Famer, said that she grew up going to Gold Medal and that it’s one of her greatest memories. She says that the Lion’s Club treats everyone in the tournament like family, and that it was a no-brainer when she decided to bring her two kids with her to Juneau.
Several players told KHNS that they were overwhelmed by the community support. They said that when they got home from the tournament, Haines locals told them that they’d listened to the games on the radio. And during Gold Medal, the Haines High School girls’ basketball team stopped by to cheer – they were on their way home from their state tournament in Anchorage.
Shove says that the community support started well before the team left on the ferry. Chilkat Indian Village paid the team’s entry fee. And she says that Olerud’s and SEARHC also pitched in, along with other businesses.
“A lot of times it’s easy to ask for community support for kids, because we all want to help our kids and give them all the opportunities in our Chilkat Valley,” Shove said. “But as an adult it can sometimes be kind of hard to ask for that support. And it is kind of an expensive tournament.”
Several players told KHNS that just registering for Gold Medal takes a big sacrifice. The tournament requires time and money, things mothers don’t normally keep in abundance. But they all said it’s worth it, and that playing basketball once a week over the winter is as good for their mental health as it is for their physical health.
However, all the players I spoke with said that the style of officiating in the Gold Medal isn’t necessarily geared toward physical wellness. Alisa Beske says that the tournament is notorious for the refs letting the athletes hash it out without calling fouls. She says the games were “extremely aggressive” and that some athletes from her winter league don’t play in Gold Medal to avoid injury.
“We’re all comparing bruises and battle wounds at the end of the week,” Beske said. “But nobody got hurt. Everybody stayed upright. Which is the goal.”
After two days of rest, the team faced Prince of Wales on Thursday. The young POW came out of the gates hot, taking an early lead over Haines.
“We were just kind of stunned,” Beske said. “We were not expecting them to come out and be like, every shot they put up seemed like it was a swoosh. They had some really good shooters.”
Haines was down by twenty after the second quarter and never recovered. They lost to POW 29-68 in Thursday’s game.
The Haines team faced Yakutat again on Friday in the semifinal. The game would decide which team would advance to the championship game. Beske told KHNS that it was a hard battle with a long Gold Medal history.
“They beat us in the championship in 2018, so it always feels good to have a little redemption and beat them,” Beske said.
Haines won 50-41, putting them back on the court against POW for the championship.
For the final game on Saturday, the team switched from a zone defense to an aggressive man-to-man. The strategy worked, and at the end of the first quarter, Haines led by one point. But POW started sinking shots in the second half, and the final score was 74-44.
Beske said that the team played strong until the buzzer, and used the opportunity to loosen up and take chances. All in all, she said it was a success – the team finished with smiles, and all in one piece.
