There’s always a challenge in trying to make something American out of Alaska, or Alaskan out of Homer, for that matter. Certainly trying to circle the same dates on a sports calendar as in Washington or even Wasilla is like pounding square pegs into round holes. You’re bound to get bent out of shape.
If 10 or 20 or 50 years ago Homer seemed far-flung, out-of-touch and impossibly small-town, these last five years, millennial and hyper, have veered the opposite direction. Homer is now chained to the US of A, with digital connectivity and the sort of big-time magazine listings that can spill the boat.
But despite the push and tug of small-time history and big-town future, there’s one place where all winter long the whole of Homer fits together, and when you’re there, you know you’re not missing out on anything, you know you’re in the middle of the action as keen as anyplace in America.
That’s the Alice Witte gymnasium at Homer High School.
As the community imagines an evolving Town Center, the best sites to brainstorm ideas may well be the bleachers in the gym, or the seats of the Mariner Theatre, or the wet tiles of the Kate Kuhns Aquatic Center. Because these spaces have become the mixing zones of age, class, politics and religion in a town of sometimes parallel and non-intersecting universes.
Ah, but that’s all sociology and philosophizing and can ring so dull. Homer High School basketball, on the other hand, has been anything but.
Mark Casseri’s boys team exploded onto the court for each home game this year like an experiment in atomic physics — small, blindingly fast, and, in combination, incredibly powerful. Da Bomb.
Justin Smith and Luke Gilbert led a squad with so many looks and configurations it could only be called a team, an organizing principle — sometimes short and quick, sometimes long and tough. But always together. The season was a scrapbook of sweaty-palmed excitement, tight shots and focused defense
Some painful losses, but never defeat.
The girls team coached by Tim Daugharty has headed north to the state championship tournament, though at this writing we don’t know their first-round results. There’s some irksome calendaring involved, with nearly two weeks between regions and the state tourney, and spring sports under way before winter sports are finished.
Round pegs, square holes.
But in a way curious for an athletic event, the final score won’t measure the girls basketball team. You have to be in the gym as Kyenna McKinstry dives to the hardwood, or Kayla Creamer diagnoses an entire court on the run. You know there’s more beyond the box score when you’ve been in the same space with Allison Horaz-dovsky’s crack southpaw shooting and Reba Temple’s stoic glides through the key.
The steroids of professional and Olympic sports and the monetary corruption of collegiate “scholar-athletes” demonstrate, by way of reverse example, the remarkable value that’s minted in our high school gym. It’s the arena where students begin to teach adults lessons worth learning.
A winter’s wisdom trumps March madness.
There’s a wonderful continuum of life bouncing around on the basketball court - elementary kids taught by middle school players, varsity athletes off to college and back with something new to pitch in, coaches becoming referees. Perhaps the best expressions of that “big team in a small town” were the alumni games two days before Christmas, with Isenhour and McKinstry siblings facing off against each other.
Pass the ball.
Alaska and Homer are different. Outside, it’s unusual to find high school teams that travel by air to their away games. Even in Alaska, it’s hard to find another town that hosts volcano make-ups.
And there’s something reassuring in the sight, at halftime, of the high school principal dry mopping the basketball court. That’s the way teams and towns work together, everybody doing the job that’s right for the moment. Even if it seems somehow out of season.
Columnist Geo Beach can be reached at geobeach@columnist.com.
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