Published Nov 20, 2023

The Nanooks rifle team hosted the Akron Zips and Kentucky Wildcats for a three-team match at TVSA the morning of Sunday, Nov. 19. Alaska grabbed the win with an aggregate of 4745, a new season-high. 

"Today was a solid match." said head coach Will Anti, "By far our best this season and it's starting to look more like a group that could win a national title. I think the team has grown a lot in a short amount of time and has a lot of room left to grow. It's a very young team to pump out a score like that in the fall semester."

A big day in both smallbore and air rifle allowed the Nanooks to take the victory over Kentucky and Akron on Sunday morning as the 'Nooks fired a 2356 in smallbore, followed by tying their program-record in air rifle with a 2389. Their last 2389 came on day two of the 2022 PRC Championships (2021-22 season) when the 'Nooks fired a 2389 to win the Conference Championship with an aggregate score of 4752. Kentucky followed with a 4745 aggregate score of their own, but Alaska took the victory with a better x-count of 352 to Kentucky's 346.

Published Nov 20, 2023 by Josh Reed

The University of Alaska Anchorage women’s basketball team saw a record-setting crowd for its game at the Alaska Airlines Center on Saturday night for the first day of the 2023 Great Alaska Shootout.

However, of the 3,711 attendees, a large contingent was there not necessarily to root for the Seawolves, but rather to cheer on Anchorage‘s Alissa Pili.

Pili, a Dimond High grad and All-American from the University of Utah, led the Utes to a 101-57 win over the Seawolves.

“It was awesome,” UAA head coach Ryan McCarthy said. “We haven’t seen this big of a crowd since we hosted the West Regional, and that was about eight years ago, so I’m really pleased with how the Shootout went. It was great and Utah had a good showing tonight as well.”

What is usually a sea of green and gold when UAA takes its homecourt was littered and in some places completely overtaken by waves of red and white.

“It’s always a blessing,” Pili said. “A lot of my family from Alaska came out to see me play, so coming home and everybody coming to support means a lot.”

Published Nov 19, 2023 by Josh Reed

With its win over the University of California, Merced on Friday, the University of Alaska Anchorage men’s basketball team really proved the old cliche, “it’s not about how you start, it’s about how you finish.” After a slow start, the Seawolves dominated on both ends of the court in their commanding 83-32 blowout victory at the Alaska Airlines Center.

After trailing 5-4 early, the Seawolves put the clamps on the Bobcats defensively and found their rhythm offensively. By the end of the first half, they had outscored them 35-4 and made home court history in the process. It marked the fewest points ever allowed in a half at a home game in program history, and the second fewest allowed in a half at either a road or a home game overall.

“It’s an identity that we’re trying to build as a defensive unit, and the guys have bought into it,” UAA head coach Rusty Osborne said. “We’re getting better game by game and I thought we were pretty good up in Fairbanks (last weekend), and it carried over.”

With the win, UAA remained undefeated and improved to 5-0. With Great Northwest Athletic Conference play less than two weeks away, it also serves as a nice confidence booster that the team is trending in the right direction during this hot start to the season.



Published Nov 18, 2023 by ANNA LAFFREY Daily News Staff Writer

Subsistence representatives for Southeast Alaska are weighing in on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration planning process to identify sites for commercial aquaculture development in Alaska waters.

NOAA, under an executive order from 2020, is tasked with identifying 10 "Aquaculture Opportunity Areas" in the U.S. over the course of five years in order to sustainably advance domestic aquaculture in the U.S. Planning work is already underway in defined areas off the Southern California coast and in the Gulf of Mexico.

Published Nov 17, 2023 by Gavin Struve

Despite leading for a solid portion of a game, the University of Alaska Fairbanks women’s basketball team came up short of its season-first win on Friday. Westminster prevailed over the Nanooks in a back-and-forth battle of two previously winless teams.

In the process, Westminster head coach Asami Morita recorded her first win with the program. Meanwhile, the Nanooks dropped to 0-7 on the season.

Published Nov 17, 2023 by Natasha Mozgovaya

In the Arctic, the impact of climate change is happening at an accelerated pace, with temperatures rising two to four times faster than the global average.

“It’s called the polar amplification,” explains Vladimir Romanovsky, a geophysicist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. “Snow and ice reflect lots of energy back to space when ice and snow are melting, and the surface turns much darker. So this amount of energy will be absorbed by the surface, and it will make the surface warmer – at the same time making the atmosphere warmer as well.”

Communities in circumpolar regions of Alaska are dealing with a triple challenge of climate change: coastal erosion, thawing of permafrost on which buildings and infrastructure stand, and, for some communities, the challenge of managing encounters with apex predators — polar bears pushed onshore.

Published Nov 17, 2023 by Kaili Berg

Iñupiaq author Lily Tuzroyluke's new book “Sivulliq: Ancestor” will be featured in the 2023 National Book Festival as part of the Great Reads from Great Places program, a list of books representing the literary heritage of each state distributed by the Library of Congress. 

In “Sivulliq: Ancestor,” the story follows an Inupiaq woman on a desperate trek to rescue her daughter from the captain of a whaling ship who has kidnapped the child to take as his own. In her writing, Tuzroyluke addresses the loss Native Americans suffered from diseases, the United States not providing any form of aid, and an influx of whaling ships destroying primary food sources. 

Tuzroyluke is an Iñupiaq writer from Alaska and Canada. She is a graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and previously served in Tribal government in her home Native Village of Point Hope, Alaska. She currently resides in Anchorage. Tuzroyluke spoke to Native News Online about being inspired by her elders, how her Indigenous identity informs her writing, and what she’s working on next.