Sports

Alaska Sports Hall of Fame: Directors' Awards honor extraordinary athletes, teams

Athletic feats by Alaskans proved so exceptional in the past year that the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame's Directors' Awards recognized co-winners in two categories, and those shared honors don't feel remotely like a cop-out.

It's hard to split hairs between awesome and amazing.

So it is that 19-year-old runner Allie Ostrander, who at 5-foot-1 figuratively towered over her peers, and UAA's national runner-up women's basketball team, which delivered a Division II-record 38 wins, have both been honored with the Pride of Alaska Award for women.

And that four-time Iditarod winner Dallas Seavey, fresh off seizing his third straight title – in record time, no less – shares the male Pride of Alaska award with the Soldotna High football team. The Stars have merely won four straight medium-school titles and a state-record 39 consecutive games.

Those awards were among six individuals or teams honored with Directors' Awards in committee voting unveiled Tuesday.

"We had a long discussion in our selection meeting, because it was such an extraordinary year for the women – Allie Ostrander and the UAA women, how do you choose? – and the same thing for the men with Dallas Seavey and Soldotna's football team,'' said committee chair Rick Mystrom.

Also honored were long-time Dimond High and youth hockey coach Dennis Sorensen and former Ketchikan High basketball star Laci Effenberger.

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Sorenson, a former Division II All-American at UAA, has won more than 500 games as a high school coach, guided four teams to state titles, and coached and influenced many of Alaska's best players for three decades. He also coached the first Alaska team to win a USA Hockey youth national championship.

Effenberger has proved a tribute to perseverance. She endured seven knee surgeries before this season helping Division II Cal State East Bay win its conference and setting a single-season school record for 3-pointers made (96). She tied the school record for most 3-pointers in a game by hitting seven shots from distance on three occasions.

The 2016 inductees will be honored in a public ceremony July 28 at the Alaska Airlines Center and also July 29 with a VIP banquet at the Ted Stevens International Airport.

The 2016 individual inductees, announced in December, are 2012 Olympic bronze medalist long jumper Janay DeLoach, the former Eielson High star, and 1984 Olympian Don Clary, the former East High star who is one of the greatest distance runners in Alaska history.

Previously announced as 2016 Hall of Fame "moments'' are Anchorage's Matt Carle winning the 2006 Hobey Baker Memorial Award as college hockey's best player and the 2001 Special Olympics Winter Games. Also, the Native Youth Olympics, a showcase of strength, balance and fortitude that has existed for 45 years, will be recognized as a Hall of Fame "event.''

This class marks the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame's 10th anniversary.

All Ostrander has done in the last year is smash her own state high school track records in the 1,600 meters and 3,200 meters; finish second overall and eclipse the 25-year-old women's record in her senior-division debut at storied Mount Marathon, where she is the record six-time junior winner; win the women's junior title at the world mountain running championship; and finish second at the NCAA Division I cross-country running championships as a Boise State freshman.

Ostrander in 2015 also was honored with a Pride of Alaska award.

The UAA women's basketball team won the Great Northwest Athletic Conference regular-season and tournament championships, and seized the West Region title, on the way to a 38-2 campaign. The Seawolves' runner-up finish tied the best in school history, matching the men's team's accomplishment in 1988.

Seavey is winning the Iditarod so frequently – three straight and four in the last five years -- he needs to update dallasseavey.com, which still carries a banner citing him as a three-time champion.

And the Soldotna football team is a juggernaut that takes on all comers. The Stars in August beat defending large-school champion South in the season opener and this fall will play current large-school champion West High in the season opener.

"Those guys don't back down from anyone,'' Mystrom said.

There's been no shortage of such athletes and teams honored in the decade the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame has existed.

"You look at these athletes, and how small our state's population is, and say we have some extraordinary athletes,'' Mystrom said.

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