Athlete of the Year: Adam Friese

WASILLA — Before embarking on his freshman year at Wasilla High School, Adam Friese had lofty goals set for himself.

Friese aimed to letter in both hockey and soccer in each of his four years at Wasilla, while maintaining a perfect 4.0 grade point average throughout his high school career.

“When he started high school, he stated his goals very clearly to me and his mom,” Adam’s father Paul said last week.

Now, four years later, the recent graduate of WHS can look back at his high school career and see he has accomplished all of his goals — and then some.

In recognition of his accomplishments, both academic and athletic, specifically during his senior year, Friese has been named a 2007-08 Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman Prep Student-Athlete of the Year.

Friese is one of nine student-athletes nominated by five Mat-Su Valley high schools.

The local high schools — Colony, Houston, Palmer, Susitna Valley and Wasilla — could nominate a male and female student-athlete who each stood out in at least one varsity sport, while maintaining a minimum 3.0 grade point average.

The winners of the inaugural award — Friese and recent Palmer graduate Geneva Ratcliff — were chosen by an independent committee, which included a group of Valley residents who have long been familiar with Mat-Su sports but are not currently affiliated with any high school.

While Friese’s goals may seem unreachable to some, he actually may not have set the bar high enough. Not only did Friese satisfy his main goals of becoming a four-year varsity letterman in two sports with a 4.0 GPA, but he was also a school valedictorian and member of the Alaska Avalanche Junior A hockey squad.

“He’s always been very mature for his age,” said Blake Livingston, Friese’s former English teacher and varsity soccer coach. “He’s a very goal-oriented person.”

Livingston said Friese’s maturity and work ethic could be seen early on during Friese’s stay at Wasilla High, in Livingston’s 10th-grade English class.

“What really stuck out to me was how respectful Adam was and his work ethic in the classroom,” Livingston said. “He generally cared about his grades. For example, he’d be working on an assignment in class, the bell would ring and everyone else would leave. But he’d be in his seat, working on his assignment, trying to perfect it.”

While sports are his love, Friese said he knows academics are the key to his future.

“Sports are my passion, my life. I love sports,” Friese said. “But I kept pushing myself to keep a 4.0 to get the best opportunity to go to college.”

What makes Friese’s family proud, Paul Friese said, was Adam’s ability to maintain the rigorous schedule throughout high school, while still finding the time to be a typical teenager.

“We’re so proud of him,” Paul Friese said. “He maintained a well-rounded lifestyle. He played hockey, he worked hard in school, and he maintained friendships. He didn’t give up one thing to do the other.”

Friese even held a part-time job, was a member of the Wasilla High chapter of the National Honor Society and was active in his church youth group during his time at WHS.

“He had more than a full schedule and never complained,” Paul Friese said.

And if that wasn’t enough, Friese earned a spot on the Alaska Avalanche.

But for Friese, skating with the Avs in a top Junior A hockey league wasn’t just additional work, it was an opportunity.

“I thought of it more as a privilege to do that,” Friese said. “I was excited to do that.”

Friese skated in 16 games for the Avs, and become a regular man in the lineup during the final stretch of the 2007-08 North American Hockey League season. By skating in at least 10 games last year, he guaranteed himself a roster spot for the upcoming season, and is looking forward to working toward his goal of earning a college scholarship to play college hockey.

“My ultimate goal is to get an academic and athletic scholarship to play Division I,” Friese said.

Friese said he’d also consider a Division III hockey program if that opportunity would arise. By finishing in the top 10 percent of his class, he also earned an academic scholarship to attend UAA, and is counting that as an option.

During his four seasons on the Wasilla hockey team, Friese helped lead the Warriors to three North Star Conference titles and four state tournament appearances. He led the team in scoring as both a junior and senior, and posted a remarkable plus-38 plus-minus rating during his final high school season.

Friese tackled courses such as chemistry and trigonometry, in addition to his athletic endeavors. He, along with his younger brother Matthew, a WHS sophomore, also took an early-morning weight lifting class, which started and finished before the first school bell even rang.

A four-year letterman and two-year captain of both the Wasilla hockey and boys’ soccer squads, Friese capped his stay at WHS as a valedictorian and spoke during his graduation ceremony at the Curtis C. Menard II Memorial Ice Arena in May.

Even though Friese maintained a perfect GPA throughout high school, he said he really didn’t think about the idea of being a valedictorian.

“It never crossed my mind,” he said. “I was not expecting that at all.”

But Friese did get the chance to represent his school as valedictorian, ironically, in the same arena that he wore his school colors as a part of the Wasilla High hockey team and earned a spot on a junior hockey roster.

“There are a lot of memories there for sure,” Friese said.

Contact Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com.