Alaska Football

Throughout the country, there's a long tradition and a huge story about the evolution of football. I lived and coached in Alaska for about 5 years, and realized that there's quite a bit of history that has gone through there--although it's pretty recent history since there's only been football up there for a few years compared to the rest of the country. In that time, though that "small pond" has put out some solid players--Mark Schlereth, Reggie Tounge, Darin College, and Chris Kuper (the last two are young linemen for the Packers and Broncos, respectively). I was amazed at the obstacles that schools/players/coaches have to deal with up there when I first got up there. There's only a few dozen schools in the entire state that play football due to enrollment and travel issues. Most of the schools are in and around the Anchorage area, but there are schools around Juneau (a three hour plane ride from Anchorage with no possibility of driving into the state), Kodiak (kids ride ferries for hours coming in off the island to play games) and even a couple of teams that start and stop every depending on kids who want to play in places like Barrow and Valdez! Some of these teams have thier kids thousands of dollars each so that they can play and the team can travel. It's unreal! Not only that, but half the year it's raining, the kids are rolling around in the mud and muck, and all for a game that the colleges in the state don't even play! There was a couple of coaches who were instrumental in getting the game adopted into the high schools in the 80's--a few of which are still around up there, although not coaching themselves. One of those coaches, a guy by the name of Buck Nystrom just passed away a couple of years ago. He was a heck of a guy who is the winningest coach in the state's history and has taken teams from Airforce bases and from North Pole to the state championship game and won against schools that had many times the enrollment! They have an awesome football camp each summer that is one of the absolute best I've been around. Coaches, if you ever have the chance, and you have a couple of kids who aren't quite D-I material, for the most part, get up to that camp. It's very well run and organized, the kids will have a blast and they'll be exposed to coaches from 20+ schools from D-II, D-III, NAIA, and community colleges from the west coast and midwest, mainly. It's a cool place to coach, the football is still a bit mideivil at times, but it's the people involved are looking for the betterment of the state, and the win-at-all-cost attitude is minimal. I now live in MN and I'm going to miss it.