Basketball junkies and accountants-turned-office-pool-bookies contend we just went through the most riveting time of year. That’s because the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments provide the most democratic forum in all of sports to decide the best team in the country.
Everyone from the Patriots of George Mason, the Bulldogs of Gonzaga and the Air Force Falcons are afforded one swipe at the giant schools and legendary basketball programs like UCLA and Duke. And every once in a while, someone gets lucky, and the mighty fall to the strains of fight songs, cheerleader tears and the bellowing of commentator Dick Vitale.
But all the drama on the college stage pales in comparison with what goes on every year in Fort Yukon, Alaska. It’s there – 8 miles above the Arctic Circle – a high school basketball team comes together and wins frequently and against so many odds that it defies common sense.
Former journalist and author Michael D’Orso spent one season with the Fort Yukon Eagles and details the almost blinding obstacles the team faces in “Eagle Blue. A Team, a Tribe and a High School Basketball Season in Arctic Alaska.”
From November to March 2005, the team endured road trips of hundreds of miles in airplanes and school vans over the most inhospitable terrain imaginable just to get to a game against another inland Alaska village.
Most days during the 28-game season the temperature dipped to 40- or 50-below zero while the Eagles sleep in the gymnasiums and cafeterias of the schools they visit before they begin their trek home the next morning.
But it’s those games that provide them a respite from what they face at home. D’Orso recounts how the 600 or so mostly Athabascan Gwich’in Natives in Fort Yukon struggle with alcoholism, drug abuse, cultural decay, an astounding school dropout rate and, worst of all, lost hope.
Many Fort Yukon residents curse their dependence on the monthly paychecks from oil and drilling settlements, but they still cash them to keep their heads above poverty level.
D’Orso recounts a general malaise in the village caused by the erosion of native pride and skills. Success of nearly any kind is regarded with lurking suspicion.
D’Orso writes of one Fort Yukon player who sees the village as being a bucket of crabs. “If one crab gets a claw-hold on the edge … and starts to pull itself out, the others will reach up and grab it and pull it back down.”
D’Orso traces the roots of Fort Yukon basketball to American servicemen stationed in Alaska who helped build gymnasiums in villages and taught natives the game. They were impressed with the speed of the Gwich’in players who adopted the break-neck style to their advantage.
Indeed, in their drive to their seventh-straight regional championship, the Eagles used their speed and stamina to run bigger, whiter teams into the ground. Along the way, they deal with a star player who struggled to get to key games because of his sled-dog commitments, a team of surly Russians and a John Belushi look-alike with a deadly three-point jumper.
All the while, the hopes and dreams of Fort Yukon rest on the slim shoulders of the Eagle players as they fight for a chance at a long-coveted state championship, and D’Orso is brilliant in detailing their fight both on and off the court.
Eagle Blue
A Team, a Tribe and a High School Basketball Season in Arctic Alaska
By Michael D’Orso
Bloomsbury, 323 pages, $23.95
