Redington girls enjoying early success

The members of the Redington Huskies girls basketball squad have talked about notching the benchmark victories, beating an opponent for the first time. Tuesday night, the Huskies had a chance to celebrate one of those victories.

Senior Marian Aparezuk hit the go-ahead three-pointer with only four seconds left to lift the Huskies to a 46-42 win over the Grace Christian Grizzlies at Grace Christian School in Anchorage. It marked the first time in the four years as a varsity program that Redington beat Grace, a Southcentral Conference rival.

“It’s huge,” Redington head coach Tim Maki said Wednesday evening as his team was preparing to board a flight to Bethel. “That is a really big deal. We’ve never beat them before.”

The win is part of a historic start for the Huskies. Redington is 8-2. The Huskies have also scored their first varsity wins over Kotzebue, Bethel and Nome this year. Last week, Redington finished third at the Dean Cummings Classic at Delta High School.

“Going into games like that we say that we have several mountains we need to climb,” Maki said.

The Redington girls make significant improvement last year. Despite the additional success during the 2018-29 season, Redington didn’t see a spike in participation. Currently there are a dozen girls on the roster, Maki said. They started with 13, but one player was lost to a season-ending injury. But what the Huskies do have, Maki said, is a tight-knit, hard working group.

“When things go wrong for us, nobody points the finger,” Maki said.

That was on display at Grace on Tuesday, he said. Maki said the Huskies trailed by double digits into the fourth quarter. Redington closed the game on a 24-11 run.

“It was huge in general to come back from double digits in the fourth quarter on the road in a conference game,” Maki said. “They don’t tap out.”

Aparezuk and Abbie Fuller, Redington’s two seniors, combined for 15 fourth-quarter points. Aparezuk and Fuller are Redington’s first four-year varsity girls’ basketball players.

“They’ve been there from the beginning, through thick and thin,” Maki said. “They’re really good leaders, mainly through leading by example.”

Grace boys 62, Redington 32

Grace Christian scored a 62-32 win over the Redington boys. Ruben Bond led the Huskies with nine points.

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