Homer basketball places 5th in Anchorage tourney

Published 9:30 pm Tuesday, January 6, 2026

The Homer High School boys’ and girls’ varsity basketball teams both took fifth place in the Mountain City Christian Academy tournament held last weekend in Anchorage. The tourney marked the start of the basketball season.

Both teams are 1-2 overall, after the boys team defeated Kotzebue but fell to Delta and Bethel, and the girls team beat Selawik but lost to Barrow and Delta.

The Kotzebue, MCCA and Kenai varsity teams also competed in the tourney.

“Tournaments are great to get everybody playing,” Homer High School girls varsity head coach Kailee Veldstra said Tuesday.

Veldstra said that the Homer girls had some first-game jitters that they quickly got out of the way, fighting hard for a win in the game against Selawik that went into overtime.

The girls played Barrow, whom Veldstra called a “great team,” in their second game of the season. Veldstra said that although you couldn’t tell from looking at the score — 8-69 in Barrow’s favor — Homer played better and “executed where they could.”

Veldstra called Homer’s face-off against Delta the “hardest game of the tournament.”

“Everyone was tired … we wanted to capitalize on some things and didn’t quite get there,” she said Tuesday. “We hit the ground running on Monday — the only thing you can do is learn from each game. I told the girls that I want us to be able to respond to this, not have a fixed mindset. Every team is learning, we have to be part of that mindset and growth.”

Head coach Jose Musa said that the boys varsity team faced off against some quality opponents in the first three games of the season.

“It was nice to be able to start the season off with that level of competition,” he said. “I saw some good things about the team that I’m excited about this year — we have a good balance of talent and skill, and the effort you usually see by about midseason was there right away.”

Musa said that both the JV and varsity boys teams were shorthanded last weekend and several players were under the weather even as they competed on the court.

“I’m super proud of (them) … we had a lot of guys out because of the holidays so we only had seven or eight players in rotation for varsity. JV won two of their three games with only five guys,” he said.

Musa noted specific performances by juniors Benjamin Engebretsen and Parker Overson.

“They’ve both been with me since freshman year, it’s been a beautiful thing to watch them grow up,” he said. “They both demonstrated competitive excellence (last weekend) and did whatever they could to provide leadership.”

Homer will host a JV basketball tournament this weekend, Jan. 8-10. Next weekend both teams will travel to Nikiski for the Rus Hitchcock Tourney, Jan. 15-17.

The Homer boys will face Bethel again in Nikiski, which Musa said he was looking forward to.

“Bethel gave us an ugly loss in the third game this weekend,” he said. “They’re another strong, very well-coached and well-disciplined team — not a team we’ve defeated in my tenure as a coach. I’m looking forward to another showdown, we’ll see if we learned anything.”

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This story was updated to correct a misquote of Jose Musa.