Some Juneau middle school athletes are hoping that a recent change in policy will let them compete outside of Juneau.
The Juneau School District hasn’t allowed middle school athletes to leave Juneau for school-sponsored sports events over the last three years.
The school board changed that policy earlier this month, so now the district’s staff will decide whether its two middle schools can send athletes out of town.
But how do students feel about this decision? Three Floyd Dryden Middle School athletes told me they really want to travel.
“Yeah, I’ve always wanted to be involved in the Ketchikan tournament,” said seventh-grader Cael Brown.
Brown, who is going out for wrestling next year, said he’s been to that tournament in Ketchikan with his dad and it was a big deal.
“It’s such a big sport. It’s one of the biggest sports in Alaska, like basketball, football, wrestling,” Brown said. “Those are like the biggest sports in Alaska and that feeling of how everybody is, like, connected with the sport, that’s really cool.”
Brown said knowing he wouldn’t be able to travel for sports actually discouraged him from trying out in the past.
Blake Plummer is also in seventh grade and said she’s been playing soccer since she was about 4-years-old.
For her, it’s about the competitive edge. She thinks the prohibition on travel has weakened her game.
“When we play against the same teams over and over, we never learn anything,” Plummer said. “We never get new competition, and when we do travel, we see how other teams play and we feel more comfortable learning how they play and going against them.”
When Plummer heard about the decision to stop sports travel, she felt like she would miss out when she reached middle school and she wouldn’t be able to reach her full potential.
In Lemon Creek, a 10-minute drive southeast of Floyd Dryden, Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School’s track and field team is fighting through a timed mile.
Eighth-grader Sage Yeshua finished with a time of 6 minutes, 49 seconds. After catching his breath, he said he likes playing soccer, running cross country and cross-country skiing with the Juneau Ski Team.
Yeshua goes to the Juneau Community Charter School, so he doesn’t know how much traveling he would’ve done for sports even if there wasn’t a ban.
“I think, it would be interesting to do that. Like, to go up against people that I don’t normally see, but it’s been also, like, pretty good just racing with the people here. It’s pretty fun still,” Yeshua said.
He was kind of neutral. He was also the only student out of five who wasn’t against the ban. The consensus for the other four is it was bad.
District officials believe one reason the school board blocked travel was because some kids couldn’t afford to participate.
Seventh-grader Andrew Smith runs track and cross country. He and several other kids think that instead of banning travel three years ago, the board should’ve found a way to help everyone who wanted to travel.
“I think some kids really do want to travel and they should allow it, but since not everyone can afford it, they should make it so there’s some way … not exactly like a scholarship, but they should make it some way that they can,” Smith said.
But, Smith said there should be some conditions.
“You should have to do some kind of tryout or tournament to go in, so the school district could support everybody going, but they wouldn’t have to spend money for everybody to go,” he said.
Whether anyone will get to go is still uncertain.
The district’s administration will have the final say on rules that could allow travel, or continue an effective ban.
