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 Junior Jake Robinson (left) and sophomore Blake Gallagher (right) posing at the Alyeska Ski Resort in Girdwood, Alaska. (Photo by Mark Haskett) |
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Nov. 25, 2008
Anchorage, Alaska - The Western Carolina men's basketball team began its week in "America's last frontier" on Monday. Junior captains Jake Robinson and Brigham Waginger will document the trip through journal entries and blogs throughout the trip to the 2008 Great Alaska Shootout.
Robinson documents the trip from the Cullowhee Valley to Anchorage and the team's first night in Alaska. Later on, Waginger will recap the sightseeing trip through the Chugach Mountains and Turnagain Arm off of Cook Inlet through the opening afternoon of practice.
Western Carolina (1-1) opens play in the Great Alaska Shootout on Thursday, Nov. 27 at 7:30 pm local time, 11:30 pm ET. The game will be broadcast on WLOS-TV 13 in Asheville just after the late local news. Fans can follow all of the tournament with live online video streaming on a pay-per-view basis through the Univ. of Alaska-Anchorage web site, GoSeaWolves.com.
Great Alaska Shootout Blog for Nov. 24 by junior forward, Jake Robinson:
We loaded the charter bus bright and early Monday morning at 3:30 am to begin our trip that would end with us landing in Anchorage, Alaska. We arrived in Atlanta in plenty of time to board our 8:30 am flight to Salt Lake City. As soon as we touched down in Salt Lake, we hustled to make our next flight that would eventually end our day of travel.
We finally made it to Anchorage at 2:30 pm Alaskan time (6:30 pm Eastern time back home) after nearly nine hours of total airtime. The views from the plane and bus as we headed to our hotel were priceless. The scenery and mountains are one of a kind here and make the mountains back home seem small.
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Once we settled into our rooms, Coach Hunter guided us through our first walk through of San Diego State. Although the trip and experiences we will have here are important, the main reason we are here is to bring a tournament championship back home to Cullowhee.
We were fortunate to have the opportunity to have an Alaskan meal with our host family that resides in Anchorage, Chris and Elaine Mello and their daughter, Page. They prepared homemade moose meat chili and sourdough bread, along with a salad and some vanilla ice cream for dessert. The sound of moose meat made some of the guys stomachs turn a little, but once we tried it, we all loved it. The food as a whole was terrific and we cannot thank Chris and Elaine enough for opening their home to us. Following our meal we headed back to the hotel to call it a night and catch up on some rest that we missed the night before.
That pretty much wraps it up for our first day in Anchorage.
Great Alaska Shootout Blog for Nov. 24 by junior guard, Brigham Waginger:
We woke up to about four inches of snow and a beautiful look over the Alaskan Harbor in Anchorage on Monday. What an amazing view to wake up and pull back the blinds to. We walked to breakfast down the block to a local place called the Snow Café (fitting to the area). Some of the guys said this place had the biggest pancakes they have ever seen.
From there, we took the bus on a tour out to the town of Girdwood on the Seward Highway, even seeing a former village called Portage. We stopped a few times to take in the scenery and snap a few pictures. The scenery was breathtaking from the mountains to the water.
Also on the sightseeing trip, we went to a wildlife center to see some of the local animals such as caribou, elk and bison - the animals were what we were all looking forward to seeing. We were able to see all we wanted to see, but some of the guys wanted to know how we could come to Alaska and not see a polar bear?
We ate lunch on the bus, and we headed to practice at South Anchorage Wolverines High School. The kids were all around the top of the gym checking out our team's practice. We were only there for a little over an hour and as we were leaving we saw the Wolverine Nordic cross country ski team packing up to head out to their course and the wrestling team getting ready for practice they put down the wrestling mats in the gym. We then headed to Sullivan Arena where we will play our games, mostly shooting at the arena, while at South Anchorage we did most of our contact.
After getting back to the hotel and showering, we headed off to the Anchorage Museum for our "Players' Huddle" tip-off event. We got to see a little history of Alaska with a lot exhibits on display. Once we were through viewing the museum, we congregated for dinner with the six of the other teams. We watched a local village dance group that did a welcome dance for us. This was letting us see a view of their culture and at one point, Blake Gallagher and Kendall Russell even joined in during a dance. We then had a great buffet dinner which included salad, fresh halibut and fresh salmon, as well as asparagus and carrots.
It was a superb dinner to end the magnificent second day.
