Spills, chills and thrills

Editor’s note: The following is the second of a two-part series detailing the year 2007 in Mat-Su Sports. Sunday’s story dealt with high school sports, while today’s covers non-prep athletics in the Valley.

MAT-SU — From mushing to mountain running, motocross to the Mat-Su Miners, the Valley was home to a multitude of events and athletes bent on pushing the limits of sports in the Last Frontier. While high school athletes stole some of the headlines this year, there was still plenty going on off campus. Here’s some of the stories that made 2007 a year of spills, chills and thrills in Mat-Su sports:

Mushing

As thousands of cheering fans looked on, 82 mushers and their sled dog teams mushed across the frozen surface of Willow Lake in March beneath a clear blue sky. Of those, 58 teams would reach their final destination, more than 1,000 miles away in Nome. The first would be Fairbanks’ Lance Mackey, a feisty cancer survivor following in the runners of a father and half-brother who’d won the race before him. Mackey would go on to win the Yukon Quest to cap the greatest season in mushing history.

Not only did Mackey’s career-making race start in Willow, but the musher’s big season got underway in December of 2006 at Zack Steer’s Sheep Mountain Lodge 150. In 2007, Steer was forced to cancel the race due to a lack of snow in December. Despite the cancelation of his race, 2007 was still a pretty good one for Steer. The Sheep Mountain veteran musher placed third overall in the Iditarod, crossing the finish line a little more than seven hours after Mackey.

The biggest middle distance race in the Valley took place in January, as mushing legend Jeff King overtook Jon Little in the final miles of the Knik 200 for a dramatic win. Little would have won the race, but his dogs took a wrong turn into a dog lot, costing the Kasilof musher valuable seconds. By the time Little had untangled the dogs, King had slipped past, reaching the Knik Lake finish line just three minutes ahead.

Big Lake’s Buser family also had a good year. Martin, one of five mushers to win the Iditarod four or more times, placed fourth in the “Last Great Race” and won both the Kuskokwim 300 and Kobuk 440 races, while Buser’s son, Rohn, won the Junior Iditarod and took fourth in the Kusko 300 in between attending classes at Wasilla High.

Junior Hockey

A year of change for the Alaska Avalanche began with last-place finish in 2007 and reason for hope heading into 2008.

In May, as the squad struggled toward a last-place finish in the North American Hockey League’s South Division, the team announced it was naming former Houston High coach Jamie Smith the team’s new head coach. Smith replaced interim head coach Keith Morris, who moved into the position of director of hockey operations. Within a month, Morris and Smith would begin a radical transformation of the team designed to bring in as much top Alaska talent as possible.

In April, the club signed six Alaskans to tender contracts, including four — Wasilla’s Jeremiah Dargis and Anchorage’s Nathan Corey, Dylan Jones and Kyle Pichler — who would become regular contributors as the 2007-08 season neared the halfway point to close out the year. In May, the team added Anchorage’s Alex Young. As the year came to a close, Pichler, Young and Dargis were among the team’s top five scorers while Corey had started 15 games between the pipes.

The team ended 2007 heading into a lengthy midseason road trip that saw the Avs holding down the fourth and final playoff spot in the South.

Alaska Baseball League

The Valley’s Alaska Baseball League squad unveiled a revamped Hermon Brothers Field — complete with paving to dramatically cut down dust levels at the Palmer park — to start the season, then fought back during a bizarre final week of the season season that ended with two league champions.

When the Miners defeated the Anchorage Glacier Pilots in the final game of the regular season on July 30, the team thought it had the championship nearly wrapped up. Players and fans waited after the game, listening over the public address system to a broadcast of the Athletes in Action Fire’s game against the Peninsula Oilers in Kenai. Had AIA lost, the Miners would have won the league crown outright. But the game on the peninsula turned into a fiasco when it was extended into extra innings. With near total darkness finally rendering play impossible in the 17th inning, the Oilers-Fire game was eventually postponed — with the Fire leading 8-4. Because the Oilers had to catch a flight to Wichita, Kan. the next morning, AIA was declared the winner when Peninsula couldn’t return for the bottom half of the 17th.

After the Fire beat a depleted Pilots team the next day, AIA was declared the league champion based on head-to-head performance.

After more than a week’s worth of waiting, the Miners were eventually declared co-champs under ABL bylaws.

Snowmachine racing

February was a big month for snowmachine racing.

On the Feb. 3, Wasilla riders Chad Gueco and Bill Wilkes teamed up to win the 39th annual International 500 Snowmobile Race in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. The team was declared the winner after the race was called 367 laps in due to heavy snow.

Later that month, Wasilla’s Todd Palin and Soldotna’s Scott Davis completed the 2,000-mile trip from Big Lake to Nome to Fairbanks 48 minutes faster than anyone else to claim the Tesoro Iron Dog snowmachine race.

The win gave the duo 11 titles between them, but was their first in four tries as a team. It also helped them avenge a one-second loss in 2006. It was made extra special for Palin by the fact that his wife, Alaska Gov. Sarah, was on Big Lake to send him off, then in Fairbanks to wave the checkered flag.

In December, Willow 17-year-old Robert Graeber qualified for the 2008 Winter X Games in snowcross, joining fellow Alaskans snowmachine riders Dane Ferguson and Paul Thacker of Anchorage at the Aspen, Colo. event.

Cross country skiing

In March, Talkeetna’s Tazlina Mannix, a 2004 graduate of Su Valley High, vaulted to national prominence in cross country skiing by winning a Europa Cup event in Slovenia. Then in April, Mannix picked up two U.S. national titles and was named U.S. Grand Champion. Based on those performances, Mannix vaulted to No. 2 in the U.S. behind fellow Alaskan Kikkan Randall, who in December became the first American woman in history to win a World Cup cross country race. In mid-December, Mannix’s success continued, as she placed second in the women’s 10-kilometer SuperTour race in Soldier Hollow, Utah.

Mountain Running

Tax Mannix’s success wasn’t limited to snow. In June, Mannix took a break from her routine to race in the Government Peak mountain race near Hatcher Pass. Despite having to be told which Talkeetna Mountains peak she’d be running up, Mannix won the women’s race, outlasting Anchorage’s Najeeby Quinn and Seward’s Cedar Bourgeois — the state’s top female mountain runner who hadn’t lost a mountain race in 13 previous tries.

In the men’s race, Alaska mountain running king Brad Precosky outlasted Brent Knight and Trond Flagstad to win the inaugural Gov’t Peak race, which organizers said they hope to make an annual event.

In July, both Precosky and Bourgeois went on to win Mount Marathon in Seward, considered to be the premier mountain running race in Alaska. It was Precosky’s fifth title and the third for Bourgeois.

In August, the Valley played host to a second mountain race of the year, the daunting Matanuska Peak Challenge. With more than 9,000 feet total altitude gain and two peaks to summit, the Mat Peak race is considered one of the toughest mountain races around. Anchorage’s Harlow Robinson won his fourth consecutive title this year, completing the 14-mile course in just 3 hours, 16 minutes, 54 seconds. Women’s winner Rachel James of Palmer won her first title in 3:47.22.

Golf

Settlers Bay pro Jeff Barnhart defeated a field of Alaska’s best golfers to win the state’s U.S. Open qualifying tournament at Palmer Golf Course in May.

Barnhart used a steady putter to finish one under par, a stroke better than Rob Nelson and Bryan Anderson of Anchorage. With the win, Barnhart advanced to sectional qualifying in Washington. Though he wasn’t able to advance to the U.S. Open, Barnhart said just getting the nod was victory enough for him.

In professional golf action, San Diego’s Aaron Dexheimer won the King Crab Open by firing a final-day 68 at Settlers Bay to win the $5,000 top prize.

The year also saw more precocious play from Valley golf phenom Rynae Baca. In July, the Settlers Bay 12-year-old posted the lowest gross score among all women at the Alaska State Amateur Championships.

Alaska Road Warriors

The Alaska Road Warriors, made up of teenagers from around the Valley, came together for one of the best seasons in team history over the summer.

Despite entering the Alaska state tournament as the No. 5 seed, the Road Warriors came within six outs of an appearance in the state title game for the first time since 1990. Alaska strung together wins over Service and East to reach the semifinals against South. There, the Road Warriors had a lead with just two innings to go before the Wolverines rallied for six runs in the final two innings to win, 11-7. One day later, an exhausted Road Warriors team was bounced from the tournament by Chugiak, but still gave the team its best state finish in a decade.

Auto racing

Action at three local tracks kept race fans plenty busy this year, with a dirt track series at Capitol Speedway in Willow, asphalt oval racing at North Star Speedway in Wasilla and drag racing at AK Raceway Park in the Butte. A dirt motocross track in the Butte — Rival Park — also kept motorsports enthusiasts plenty busy all summer long.

One big highlight of the season came at the quarter-mile drag strip, where in July several top fuel dragsters brought their high-performance nitro rigs out for a loud spin. When the smoke cleared, New Zealand’s Grant Downey had set a new course record after blasting down the course at more than 270 miles per hour.

In October, a local drag racer, Palmer’s Nathan Thornsley, brought his 1967 Dodge Dart to Rockingham, N.C. to compete in the IHRA Bracket Racing World Finals, where he lost in the first round of the eight-car elimination. Wasilla’s Scott Roloff also qualified based on his times at the Butte strip, but had to skip nationals.

Arena football

Former Colony High standout Cole Magner reached the Arena Bowl championship game as a wide receiver for the Columbus Destroyers, and caught a touchdown pass in the Destroyers’ 55-33 loss to the San Jose SaberCats.

Magner’s father, Randy, was briefly named head coach of the fledgling Alaska Wild arena team, then stepped down after the former Colony High coach had philosophical differences with management. One day after Magner’s resignation, a longtime Valley high school assistant coach, Hans Deemer, was tapped for the top job.

Snowboarding

Desi Diselrod, a 16-year-old from Wasilla, won the junior women’s slopestyle title at the U.S.A. Snowboarding Association National Championships in Truckee, Calif. in April. Diselrod finished the 2006-07 season as the nation’s top-ranked female junior in both overall freestyle and freestyle/alpine combined. Diselrod also won a national title in slopestyle in 2005,

Gymnastics

Competing for Denali Gymnastics, Wasilla’s Rachel Kennedy won the Level 9 Alaska state gymnastics title and earned a trip to the West Regional Championships, where she placed 12th, including a seventh-place finish on the vault.

Contact Frontiersman sports reporter Matt Tunseth at 352-2265 or

matt.tunseth@frontiersman.com