Homer area sports in brief

Upcoming events

Basketball: The boy’s basketball team will play Grace Christian School at 8 p.m. at home on Friday. The girls will play Grace at 6:30 p.m. Friday. These games are Senior Night for both Homer teams.

The boys will play Anchorage Christian School at 4 p.m. on Saturday. The girls junior varsity and varsity games against ACS on Saturday have been canceled.

Cross-country skiing: The Nordic ski team will compete in the State Championships this weekend, starting today, at Birch Hill in Fairbanks. The championships continue through Saturday.

In review

Basketball:

The host Kenai Kardinals topped the Homer boys’ basketball team in a close conference contest last Thursday.

Kardinals 44, Mariners 40

Homer 10 14 7 9 —40

Kenai 11 7 16 10 —44

HOMER (40) — Beachy 9, Adkins 4, Reutov 7, T. McGhee 4, Anderson 8, Knapp 4, J. McGhee 3, Swoboda 1.

KENAI (44) — Efta 3, Felchle 2, Baker 2, Bezdecny 18, McEnerney 0, Stockton 0, Trujillo 12, Pitsch 7, McKibben 0.

3-point FG — Homer 1 (Reutov); Kenai 3 (Bezdecny 2, Pitsch 1).

Team fouls — Homer 15; Kenai 18. Fouled out — Efta.

Lady Grizzly Hardwood Classic

Up in Anchorage, the Homer girls lost to Bartlett’s junior varsity team 42-25 this past Saturday in the fourth-sixth place game of the tournament.

Homer had made it to the fourth-sixth place game with a 56-51 win over Aniak on Friday.

Cross-country skiing

The Homer Nordic ski team competed in a meet this past weekend just for teams in the Kenai Peninsula Borough. The girls team took first, while Soldotna won for the boys.

The event was a relay with teams of four skiers. Each team had two classic skiers and two skate skiers.

“The Homer girls got the first place team award for winning the relay with Autumn Daigle, our last skier, passing Soldotna in the last kilometer of the race,” wrote coach Allison O’Hara in an email.

Andy Super got 6th place in the skate division.

Homer skiers Liam Houlihan, Rio Pitcher, Aiyana Cline and Sienna Carey also won the mixed relay Golden Boot Award, O’Hara said.

Middle School sports

The Homer Middle School Husky ski team won several places last Friday at the Homer Invitational Nordic Ski Race at Lookout Mountain Recreation Area.

A total of 74 skiers from Homer, Soldotna, Kenai, and Seward raced on a sunny day over a 3-kilometer course that was perfectly groomed, according to Mike Gracz, who’s involved with the team.

“In the girls race, seven of the top-ten podium places were filled by glitter-faced Huskies,” he wrote in an email to the Homer News.

Ireland Styvar repeated the second-place performance of her last race. Eryn Field, Alana Houlihan, Hannah Stonorov, and Frida Renner took the next four places. Sidney Flora and Lawson Alexson-Walls also took ninth and tenth place respectively.

Kenai skier Jayna Boonstra, daughter of three-time Olympic skier Todd Boonstra, took first place overall at the event with a time “faster than all but the top two boys over the same race course,” Gracz wrote.

The Huskies had only three boys competing, and two of them placed in the top five for the boys’ race.

Garret Briscoe was fourth and Seamus McDonough was fifth.

Lion Trejo, who Gracz said only began skiing a few weeks ago, finished 29th out of 47 total competitors.

Adult basketball:

In the City of Homer basketball league, the South Peninsula Hospital team won the league title on Saturday.

Their win in the championship game against the Bay Welding Smooth Operators was the end to an undefeated season.

Final league standings:

1. South Peninsula Hospital

2. Bay Welding Smooth Operators

3. Pathfinder Aviation Buckets

4. Alaska Bible Institute

5. Uminski Properties K-12