Glacier View team makes history

GLACIER VIEW — Lou Anna Boyer has coached volleyball for about 15 years at Glacier View School. With a small student body — there are only about 40 students at the K-12 school this year — there was never a guarantee Boyer would have enough athletes to field a team.

In some years there may have been four or five students who wanted to come out and play. In others there might be six willing to give volleyball a try.

But this year, Glacier View not only has a team, the school that sits alongside the Glenn Highway north of Chickaloon has a squad that’s qualified for the ASAA/First National Bank Mixed 6 State Volleyball Championships, slated to start Thursday at Dimond High School in Anchorage.

The Glacier View Wolverines, a first-year ASAA program, advanced to the Mixed 6 event by winning the title during the Southwestern Conference Championships in Ouzinkie late last month. But the Wolverines’ journey to Dimond High began midway through the 2009-10 school year.

“There’s a group of boys that said, ‘we want to play,’” Boyer said Monday.

Glacier View may not have had enough girls to field a team, but there were about a half-dozen boys ready to give volleyball a shot. Boyer set up a scrimmage against a boys team from the Palmer-based Northern Lights Volleyball Club, and that simply fueled the students’ enthusiasm. That suddenly made the Mixed 6 class — an ASAA division of volleyball that allows both boys and girls to play — a legitimate possibility.

“Because the boys showed that interest, we were able to pursue this,” said Claudia Berkley, who coaches the team alongside Boyer.

ASAA quickly granted Glacier View Mixed 6 status, Boyer said, and placed the Wolverines in the Southwestern Conference.

With nine players — six boys and three girls — the Wolverines practiced and played a limited 2010 schedule, which included home and road matches against Nikolaevsk, a small Russian Orthodox village near Anchor Point, and the conference tournament in Ouzinkie, a town on Spruce Island near Kodiak.

The Wolverines have girls on the team who have been playing volleyball, at least recreationally, for quite some time. But many of the boys are fairly new to the sport.

“The boys have basically been playing a little over a year,” Boyer said. “They’re really athletic kids and have picked up volleyball amazingly.”

Glacier View went 3-0 in the conference tournament. The Wolverines beat the Paklook Puffins — a co-op team that includes students from several villages around Kodiak — in the first round. A win over the Kakhanok Warloads put the Wolverines in the title game. Glacier View won the championship with a 3-1 win over Nikolaevsk.

Berkley said it was nice for the Wolverines to play Nikolaevsk, a team they had formed a friendly rivalry with, during the final match.

“They all became good friends throughout the season,” Berkley said.

Both Berkley and Boyer said the support of the small Glacier View community has been important.

“We have incredible support from our school and our community,” Berkley said. “Every game we’ve had, we’ve had all the parents and a lot of the community members show up.”

The community also supported the team financially, helping fund the first-year team and cover expenses for road trips to Nikolaevsk, Ouzinkie and Anchorage.

“The majority of the funds came from this community,” Berkley said.

Glacier View begins its state tournament Thursday at 3:45 p.m. against Western Interior Conference champion Golovin. The Wolverines will play either Tikigaq or Russian Mission on Friday.

Boyer said she hopes Glacier View can continue to field volleyball teams in the future, but that will depend on how many students from the small Glenn Highway school are interested.

“As long as there’s kids around,” Boyer said.

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/matsu_sports.