A group of students cannot hear the drone of the Frontier Airlines bush plane until the wheels have nearly hit the ground. A group of students has been huddling excitedly behind the lone storage building adjacent to the gravel runway. They rush out from their protective hiding spot when they hear the sound. A 25 mph wind forces them to lean hard into the swirling snow and labor purposefully toward the craft that is the only means of transportation off their island. They are going to the Western Interior Ski and Biathlon Championships.
Eight young skiers and their coach are leaving Savoonga, Alaska, a small Eskimo village of 650 people on Saint Lawrence Island, far out in the Bering Sea. Savoonga is nearer to Russia than the US and is as close to "the middle of nowhere" as it gets. It is one of the most unlikely places to find one of the state's top rural ski and biathlon teams.
When they are not skiing, the students help their families lead the subsistent hunting lifestyle that has been Savoonga's means of existence for thousands of years. While the elders have nicknamed their city "the Walrus Capital of the World," the Savoonga skiers are setting out to make a bid for the title "Rural Ski Capitol of Alaska."
Thanks to the Western Interior Ski Association (WISA), cross-country skiing and biathlon are thriving with school children from the windswept and treeless island. The two winter sports are also flourishing in many other Alaskan villages that don't have road connections with the rest of the world.
WISA was created in 1986 by John Miles, a gregarious fellow with an infectious enthusiasm for skiing. Miles introduced skiing and biathlon to the remote reaches of Alaska's western coastline in 1978 and joined forces with coaches from the isolated settlements on Alaska's interior river systems a few years later. The Western Interior Ski and Biathlon Championships, Alaska's rural state, meet was the result of the collaboration.
Alaska School Activities Association (ASAA), the state's governing body for high school and junior high sports, began organizing state-level ski contests in 1975. They tailored the events to large, urban schools that could drive to races. Low numbers of students in remote schools made it impractical for most village schools to compete at an ASAA meet. Hence, Miles busily planted the seeds for the future WISA.
Miles worked tirelessly. He provided children as young as kindergarten with boots, skis, and poles. And he helped create several fantastic rural ski and biathlon venues. The result of 30-plus years of hard work and dedication has been that thousands of kids, spanning several generations, have learned to ski. Over time, Miles became a local legend – the Johnny Appleseed of rural Alaskan skiing.
Miles's main goal was to present a healthy winter activity to the primarily Native American youth in bush communities. But, he also wanted to expose them to ski competition.
The pioneers of WISA realized the challenges of skiing in bush Alaska. Due to many factors, rural coaches would delay the start of ski training in their secluded villages each year. The list includes a lack of early snow, nearly 24 hours of darkness, and bitterly cold conditions (interior temperatures in mid-winter routinely reach -50 to -60 degrees Fahrenheit). The rural coaches knew urban teams were getting out as early as October and November. Skiers in big cities also had the advantages of well-developed ski locales and heated chalets surrounded by miles of professionally groomed and sometimes artificially lit trails.
Teams in remote Alaska typically ski on whatever snow is available, often on snowmobile trails. Ski conditions in the bush improve in February, just about when the annual ASAA-sponsored state cross-country skiing championships occur.
In response to these facts of village ski life, WISA coaches created a series of races geared toward students in the bush. They added the sport of biathlon to the event list since many rural youth were already excellent hunters. Biathlon helped to attract lots of kids to ski racing.
Race organizers hold the resulting Western Interior Ski and Biathlon Championships in early April, some five weeks after the ASAA meet, at a time when urban athletes have traded their skis for bikes and soccer balls. It is the only state sports tournament held off the road system.
Over its 23-year existence, 27 different rural schools have participated in the WISA Championships. Most of these would never have come together if not for this organization. Since no roads lead to their villages, the only way sites can attend a WISA event is to travel by air in small bush planes. Savoonga often ventures as far as 700 miles, one way, to compete.
Because the logistics of travel are so complex, not to mention expensive, for the participating school districts, the Western Interior Championships rotate between coastal and interior sites each year. A WISA meet transforms each tranquil host site into a beehive of ski activity. WISA participants experience a unique sense of community as they eat, socialize, and are housed together in schools for the duration of each event.
The Western Interior Championships include ski races and team relays, but the main event is the biathlon competition. Contestants from junior high (5th - 8th grades) and high school divisions ski to managed ranges, where they find rifles and safety officers waiting for them. WISA qualification races, such as the Bering Straits Regional meet, typically contain Alaska's largest biathlon race each year, sometimes having three times the number of participants of any biathlon contest in Anchorage.
"Thanks to WISA, cross-country skiing has remained a vibrant sport for rural Alaskan children," says Eric Morris of White Mountain. Morris has been promoting the sport in western Alaska for three decades and was one of WISA's founding organizers. "I'm proud that many of our fine WISA-developed athletes have competed on larger, international stages."
The biathlon race at the Western Interior Ski/Biathlon Championships is now a qualifier for the Olympic-style Arctic Winter Games, which occur every two years. Race winners earn spots on either Team Alaska's ski or snowshoe biathlon squads. They compete against kids from Greenland, northern Canada, northern Russia, and northern Europe.
Savoonga teacher and ski coach Matthew Stark has consistently kept his skiers on the podium. "The WISA ski program has brought our kids lots of pride," he says. "Travel is always a positive thing for our kids. WISA provides not only competition but also affords them amazing life experiences. Last year, a Savoonga skier traveled to the Arctic Winter Games in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, to compete in snowshoe biathlon. He got to visit another country and meet people from around the world. He also had the bonus of seeing trees."
