For the first time in recent memory, the Unalaska Lady Raiders volleyball team is headed to the state championships. The girls placed second in the Borealis Conference tournament in Talkeetna last week, winning three out of five games. The team took the tournament’s sportsmanship trophy and several individual players made the All Conference and All Tournament Teams. Kanesia Price was recognized for academic achievement.
The Unalaska High School wrestling team will be competing in a regional wrestling tournament in Bethel on Friday. Head coach Steve Gregory says Unalaska will be up against teams from 21 other communities.
“I think they’re pretty well prepared and I’m expecting them to do very well."
Gregory says he expects at least half of the team to qualify for the statewide tournament that's taking place next weekend.
It was a busy weekend for local athletes, as Raider swimmers and wrestlers had some of their last home meets before regional tournaments kick off.
Raider swimmers hit the pool Friday for their senior night and community meet. Even though they weren’t competing against an opposing team, coach Julie Heard says the team members logged impressive performances.
"We had a lot of swimmers do personal bests, shaving off one, two, three, four seconds on their time," Heard says.
The Raider cross-country team is off to a bang, shattering a school record at their first meet.
At the Seward Invitational on Saturday, freshman Ross Enlow ran a 5,000-meter course in 18 minutes and 43 seconds. The previous Unalaska City School record for that distance was set by Kyle Haskins in 2008, with a time of 19 minutes and 1 seconds.
Enlow placed 19 out of 80 runners. Coach David Gibson explains that the meet was unusual in that Unalaska was mostly competing with larger 3A schools like Homer and Wasilla. He says that a good showing at this meet means that the Raiders should be competitive when facing teams from their own division.
Hallidie Wilt set a new running course record in the Bobby Johnson Summer Bay Classic on Sunday. The former UAA runner finished the 13.1-mile course in 1:28:51. That’s an average pace of 6 minutes and 45 seconds per mile.
Joe Echevarria set the previous record in 1996 with a time of 1:31:04.
Sixteen people ran, biked and walked this year’s race.
Two sailors headed from Honolulu to Unalaska were rescued by the Coast Guard Sunday night. Lydia and Bill Ludgate have been sailing around the Pacific for three years, trying to retrace Captain Cook’s voyages. The rudder on their 50-foot sloop broke about 500 miles south of Unalaska.
“If the wind was in the right direction, we could sail north, but if the wind was in the wrong direction, we just had to sit," Bill says. "51༠40N is etched onto my memory cells because we sat on 51༠40 for about five days, waiting for the wind to change, just bobbing up and down.”
Two sailors headed from Honolulu to Unalaska were rescued just 20 miles south of town late Sunday night. Petty Officer David Moseley says the British nationals first made contact with the Coast Guard on Friday, when the rudder on their sailboat broke.
“They weren’t expecting and they weren’t requesting Coast Guard assistance, but they let us know there was an issue so we could keep tabs of what was going on.”
The 24-foot Cesura on the beach in Sarana Bay, Akutan/Photo Courtesy of Rimus Meleshyus
In May, an amateur sailor with no open-ocean experience embarked on a 1,200-mile trip across the Gulf of Alaska in a 24-foot sailboat. Earlier this week he was rescued from a beach on Akutan Island.
The last time Rimas Meleshyus went sailing was in 1993. That is, the last time before setting off on his journey across the Gulf. The 60 year-old Russian Cold War refugee says it was always his dream to sail around the world.
The longest day of the year also marked the start of the summer running season.
Nearly two dozen people participated in the annual Summer Solstice Run on Wednesday night, with local teenager Bryan Earnshaw coming in first overall. The course is two miles long and stretches the length of Henry Swanson Drive, along Captains Bay.
The Unalaska Department of Parks, Culture, and Recreation will be hosting their next race, the Ballyhoo Run, on July 21. Results
