It was not a good feeling. My first day reporting for the Juneau Empire was reaching its end, and I couldn’t string together a few sentences to save my life.
A little over an hour had passed since Thunder Mountain High School’s boys basketball team, backed by Chase Saviers’ 40 points, defeated crosstown rival Juneau-Douglas High School in an early February game at JDHS.
What’s going on? This story should write itself!
I fumbled my way through the first 400 words of the article before retiring for the night. After doing some more writing and edits in the morning, I sent it off to my editor, just happy to be done.
The following Tuesday arrived, and my first article for the Empire appeared in the paper: “Saviers drops 40 on Crimson Bears, Thunder Mountain sweeps Juneau-Douglas.”
Over 10 months removed from that antsy beginning to newspaper work, and I’m more than happy to be thinking about writing about basketball again. For one, it means I’m coming up on my one-year anniversary of covering sports for the Empire.
I also just really like basketball — always have. And, if last season’s drama on the hardwood was any indication, basketball likes me back. The Region V tournament in Juneau was especially memorable, such as the heated JDHS-Ketchikan boys semifinal that saw the lights go out with the game tied at 46-46 with 1 second left in regulation.
I have good reason to believe this high school season, which officially began on Nov. 29, will be good to basketball-crazy reporters and fans alike.
The Region V Conference has proven itself as one of the most competitive in the state for both boys and girls teams. In two of the last three years, the conference has qualified two of its three teams for the state tournament. This is noteworthy because Region V, unlike other conferences up north, only receives one automatic berth to the state tournament: the conference tournament champion.
For the two remaining teams to make state, they must have one of the two highest winning percentage indexes (WPI) of teams not automatically qualified. The metric is calculated based on a team’s strength of schedule and record.
Last spring, the JDHS girls’ 17 and Ketchikan’s boys’ 16 wins against Class 4A competition helped them get in the tournament after their respective losses at regionals.
Of course, the year before that, JDHS boys basketball won its first state championship in nearly two decades.
It’s a bit too early to speculate who will and who won’t be back in Anchorage in March, but the goal of this week and next is to give you some background to inform your own opinion. Starting today, the Empire will be running season previews for all four of Juneau’s high school basketball teams. The TMHS season previews will be in the paper this week and the JDHS season previews will go in next week.
The TMHS girls play in their first game of the season this Thursday against the Lathrop Malamutes in Fairbanks. Next week, the remaining three Juneau teams will play in their first games of the season. The JDHS boys and girls will play in Tarkanian Classic in Las Vegas on Dec. 20-23.
The Capital City Classic the following week will mark the home debuts for both the JDHS teams. The Classic will see six visiting teams come to town. Both the boys and girls fields will feature one team from the Pacific Northwest: the Friday Harbor Wolverines for boys and Southerlin Bulldogs for girls.
As for the TMHS boys, they won’t play at home until the first week of January, when they host crosstown rival JDHS.
In other basketball news, JDHS took the first step in modernizing its gym this fall with two state-of-the-art video displays on either side of the gym. The larger-than-life displays will provide fans with instant replay and unlimited fan prompts.
See you at the games!
