After two years of shortened seasons and games canceled due to the pandemic, the Haines Glacier Bears basketball teams are off to strong starts. KHNS’s Brandon Wilks spoke with coaches from the boys and girls teams about the new season.
Both teams got the season started with the Jamie Shaw Memorial Tournament in Whitehorse, December 7th through the 10th. This was the first time the tournament was held in three years and the Haines girls team won the championship game over the F.H. Collins Warriors 41-31. This year, more nonconference games have been added outside of the Southeast region to allow teams more opportunity to play and gain experience without the heavy cost of plane and ferry travel. Coach Don Nash of the boys team says it’s great for the kids.
“When you get on the road with the van and a team in it, it’s actually pretty cheap for the school system. And it’s close. You think about Fairbanks being way up north, but we can go to talk in about eight or nine hours and spend the night and then be up to Fairbanks and four hours the next morning so it’s it’s actually faster than taking the ferry down to Ketchikan for games.”
Nash says nonconference Tournaments allow the teams to get more playing time.
“When you add a tournament, you can play three games and they count as two on your total. So this year, we’re really fortunate in having a total of about, I think we’ll have about 24 games, we’re close to the maximum allowed by us under our belt before we go to regionals.”
This year the team has four seniors, three juniors, four sophomores and five freshmen. Seniors Eric Gillham and Luke Davis are co-captains. The girls team also has four seniors on its roster to help mentor younger players. The girls are undefeated so far this season. Coach Coleman Stanford says he is grateful for the extra games after the last two years but remains focused on performing well in-conference.
“We played nine, nine scrimmages total. And yeah, like I said, you know, they’re good games to get out and get some get some kinks worked out. But but we’re also, you know, we’re definitely not satisfied, at this moment. We’d like to get those, those conference games under our belt and get some, get some progress in that direction. You know, that’s when we really start kind of, kind of measuring ourselves in the system, you know? …We want to play up, you know, we want to play up so that our skill sets improve.”
Up next the boys play in the Capitol City Classic in Juneau, December 27th through the 30th and the girls are in Skagway from the 30th through the 1st for the Don Hather tournament.
