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This fall, social studies teacher Jack Carney hosted a mock election for his junior and senior students. The kids learned about the issues, ballot measures and candidates, asked questions and eventually cast mock ballots of their own. A newly updated school board policy will ensure such classroom efforts can continue in the future. “In social studies classes, for example, we want things about the election and about political parties,” Superintendent Bill Burr said. “We wanted to make sure that was allowed.” The new policy ensures this. Though...
According to Clark Griswold, you have two choices when it comes to selecting your Christmas tree. Your first option is to go to a tree lot: “They invented Christmas tree lots,” Griswold says in the 1989 movie “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” “because people forgot how to have a fun old-fashioned family Christmas and are satisfied with scrawny, dead overpriced trees that have no special meaning.” Instead, he advises, “to do what your forefathers did.” Which is, “walk into the woods, pick out that special tree and cut it down with your ba...
The Southeast champions' season came to a close at the hands of Susitna Valley on Dec. 6 at the state tournament. The double elimination, three-day tournament was held in Palmer. After plowing their way through Southeast competition the weekend prior, Wrangell had high hopes going into state. However, due to some injuries, illnesses and struggles to close out games, the Wolves were forced to settle for fourth place at the tournament. "Fourth at state is nothing to hang our heads about," head...
"You have to do hard better." That's what high school girls basketball coach Christy Good keeps telling her players. It's a phrase that she likes to fall back on, a mantra of sorts. Though those six words may not have any tangible meaning, they encapsulate Good's understanding of the game of basketball: Do the hard stuff and results will follow. Good, who is now in her fourth season as head coach, sat down with the Sentinel on Dec. 5 to discuss the upcoming season, her mindset as a coach and...
Wrangell asserted its wrestling dominance over 10 Southeast rivals at the Viking Invite held in Petersburg on Dec. 6-7. While the competition was not organized like a traditional bracket-style tournament, the scramble-style play gave Wrangell wrestlers plenty of opportunities to get back on the mat after a week of rest. On the first day of competition, Wolves won 27 of their 32 matches and led the 10-school invitational with 17 pins. On day two, they picked up right where they left off, winning...
The borough assembly has taken the first step toward assisting WCA’s purchase of land just south of the Wrangell Medical Center, where the tribal council plans to build a cultural center. Though Tribal Administrator Esther Aaltséen Reese said any ribbon-cutting ceremony would be at least a few years away, Borough Manager Mason Villarma said the borough and WCA hope to have the rezoning and borough land sale finalized by the end of the year. The new cultural center will be built behind the WCA offices on Zimovia Highway, and Reese said the ca...
Mikki Angerman just wants everyone to feel included. She isn’t an esports fanatic. She doesn’t even call herself a gamer. Instead, she’s a special services educator who is passionate about promoting inclusion and acceptance. “Our world right now needs empathy more than anything else,” she said. Angerman wants the middle and high school esports team to be a conduit for just that. She hosted preliminary and casual esports practices last spring, but after realizing what was needed to both expand the team and possibly compete against other sch...
Maybe Clark Griswold would have been able to get those lights working a little quicker if he was motivated by the Wrangell Chamber of Commerce’s hefty prize packages. The chamber’s annual Christmas home decorations contest begins soon, and if your home has the best decorations, you could win $300. Second place will win $200, and third place will win $100. There will be $50 prizes for two additional honorable mentions as well. There is a separate category for businesses. The business with the best window decorations will win the chamber’s silve...
The Wrangell school district will not purchase an electric school bus this year. Business Manager Kristy Andrew informed the Environmental Protection Agency that the district would return the $370,000 federal grant it received in 2023. After the school board voted down the purchase on Sept. 9, the district had until Nov. 22 to inform the EPA of its decision, which it did ahead of the extended deadline. This concludes a four-month long saga in which the school board initially expressed optimism about the bus purchase before flipping on the...
Three-peat secured. The Wrangell High School volleyball team are Southeast champions. After entering the tournament as favorites, Wrangell beat Hoonah, Petersburg and Metlakatla en route to head coach Brian Herman's third consecutive title in as many years at the program's helm. The Southeast 2A tournament was held at Craig High School on Thursday through Saturday, Nov. 21-23. The champs have a week to rest up before the state tournament Dec. 5-7 in Palmer. Wrangell trounced the Hoonah Braves...
For about half the average price of a home in Seattle, you could buy Wrangell’s former hospital property. The borough assembly passed a resolution on Nov. 18, dropping the price of the property from its appraised value of $830,000 to a new asking price of $498,000, pretty close to the reduced price of $470,000 the borough advertised in 2022. The property, which has been vacant since SEARHC moved out in 2021, currently sits empty. It costs the borough several tens of thousands of dollars a year to insure and maintain the building against d...
The Wrangell school district is running out of money — literally. If state and borough funding continue at the current levels, the schools will empty their reserves within two years. To help counteract the funding woes, the school board and superintendent met with the borough manager, mayor and borough assembly to workshop potential solutions on Nov. 19. The conversation lasted nearly two hours and began with slide deck presentations from Borough Manager Mason Villarma and school district Business Manager Kristy Andrew. Villarma was blunt. “We...
In a unanimous decision, the borough assembly took the first step toward increasing flexibility for the number of annual tax-free days, allowing for anywhere between zero and two days in a year. Currently, there are two sales tax-free days per year, often bookending the summer season so that full-time residents (rather than tourists) can enjoy the town-wide discounts in the spring and fall. On tax-free days, Wrangell’s 7% sales tax is removed for 24 hours. Local businesses tend to run additional sales on these days, with the hope of increasing...
One day Wrangell will attend a wrestling meet where they don't come home with a podium finish. The Sitka Invitational on Nov. 22-23 was not that day. Four Wrangell wrestlers ended the weekend on the podium's top step. Two finished with silver medals and two more finished third. The team finished in fourth place, just 10 points behind third-place Ketchikan. Mt. Edgecumbe High School won the meet, but Wrangell boasted the highest winning percentage, beating opponents in 53 of their 75 matches....
The number of cruise ship passengers visiting Wrangell is expected to rise in 2026, with the borough’s draft schedule estimating it could come close to 70,000. This is an increase from the estimated 40,000 in 2025, which is already almost double the number of passengers Wrangell welcomed in 2024. Though the borough anticipated as many as 30,000 passengers this year, cancellations and cruise company bankruptcies caused that figure to fall short of expectations. The first ship of the 2026 season will arrive on May 7 when the 728-passenger S...
Kids keep asking John Schank if he's Santa. "I can't lie to them," he laughed. "But I say, 'I'm just his helper.'" John Schank is 72. He has a big white beard and has been driving for Lynden Transport for 49 years. He and Fred Austin, another longtime Lynden driver, are transporting the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree and its 82-foot sled - trailer - from Seattle to Washington, D.C. This is Schank's second time driving The People's Tree from Alaska to Washington. He was selected to drive the rig...
Police Chief Gene Meek has revamped the Wrangell Police Department. Since arriving in July, he has implemented a series of policies that emphasize transparency, prevention and community engagement. When he arrived in town, he realized something pretty quickly about the police department. "This agency was stuck in the 1990s," he said. "It was a reactive model, where you sit back, wait for calls for service, and go out and handle the calls. That's fine from a law enforcement standpoint, but...
And with that, the Jamie Roberts era of the Wrangell swim team comes to a close. A head coach who has always valued improvement over results, Roberts was pleased with the high school team’s final performance with her watching over from the pool deck. Of the 28 individual events that Wrangell swimmers competed in, they earned 13 personal-best times. Both relay teams posted their fastest swims of the year as well. The Southeast championships were held in Petersburg on Nov. 1-2. Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé won the girls championship...
In a series of intersquad and exhibition matches, Wrangell wrestlers put on a show in front of their fans, friends and families. On Friday, Nov. 15, the high school wrestling team hosted their only home event of the year. Petersburg made the trip to town for the one-day meet, comprised of a handful of exhibition matches between the two rivals. The senior night festivities that preceded the competition were emotional for head coach Jack Carney. Carney, who also serves as the middle school wrestli...
For Artha DeRuyter, flowers have always been a passion. She's owned flower shops in Fairbanks and now Wrangell. Sometimes she operates seasonally - other times, year-round. At one point, she even ran a shop out of her boat in the Wrangell harbor. But now, the lifelong passion is taking her to the White House Last month, DeRuyter was invited to help decorate the White House for the Christmas season. She will join a team of roughly 300 other volunteers from around the country to - quite literally...
In the run-up to Election Day, high school teacher Jack Carney took a hands-on approach to teaching his U.S. government students about the issues at stake. The class is predominantly made up of seniors. Over the past few weeks, Carney’s students researched, studied and formed opinions on the ballot measures and candidates in the Nov. 5 election. Though just one of the nine students was eligible to vote in the actual election, eight of the nine students participated in the mock election. (One student was absent.) The results were relatively in l...
As temperatures drop below freezing, many folks in town will turn to their wood-burning stoves for some warm respite. And while there may be nothing cozier than a pair of wool socks and a wood stove on an icy evening, there is certainly nothing cozy about a chimney fire. Chimney fires are common but are easily preventable by regular maintenance. They are often caused by a buildup of creosote on the inside of chimney walls. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s fire safety guide, creosote is essentially the residue left over b...
After a two-week hiatus, the girls high school volleyball team returned to the court, winning six of their seven matches in the second and final seeding tournament of the year. Their record was enough to secure the No. 1 seed for the upcoming Southeast championships held in Craig later this month. The three-day tournament in Petersburg Nov. 7-9 is one of just two tournaments that determines the seeding for the Nov. 21-23 Southeast championships. The Wolves got their Petersburg play off to a hot start on Nov. 7, brushing aside the hosts in two...
The Wolves put on a show at the Bill Weiss Wrestling Invitational in Ketchikan. By the time the meet had wrapped up on Nov. 9, Wrangell walked away with two champions, three runners-up and three bronze medalists. The girls team finished fourth overall while the boys team finished fifth. Palmer’s Colony High School won the meet with 369.5 points. Wrangell boasted the tournament’s third-highest winning percentage, with Wolves winning 68 of their 106 matches. Additionally, the boys and girls teams combined with the fifth-highest number of pins acr...
Almost 20 years after the legislation was signed into law, the Real ID deadline has a new final date: May 7, 2025. Starting then, Alaskans who want to use their drivers license to travel on commercial airlines will be required to present a Real ID to TSA as their form of identification. For those without a Real ID, other federally issued identification like passports, military IDs or Bureau of Indian Affairs cards will suffice. Wrangell residents without a Real ID — distinguishable by the star in the top-right corner — are in luck: Jayme How...
