Busy weekend for Wolves at Clarke Cochrane tournament

While most people take days between Christmas and New Year's as an opportunity to rest and gear up for a return to work or school, the Wrangell Wolves stayed busy by competing in the Clarke Cochrane Christmas Classic. This is a basketball tournament held in Ketchikan annually, that draws in many schools from across Alaska and from out of state.

Things didn't go very well for the Wolves, Coach Cody Angerman said in a Facebook post on Sunday, Dec. 29, but it was a good learning experience for the team and they found several areas they can work to improve on.

Wrangell's first game was against Monroe Catholic High School, of Fairbanks, on Dec. 27 evening. Monroe demonstrated a strong defensive game, as well as a fast offense. The Wolves were several points behind after the first quarter, 22-6 in favor of Monroe. The distance between the two scores only grew as the game went on, 42-16 in the second quarter and 56-23 in the third. Wrangell saw a bit of a comeback in the fourth quarter, almost doubling their points. However, it was not enough to catch up with Monroe. The final score was 74-41, a loss for the Wolves.

After this loss, the Wolves played against Craig High School. Angerman said that this was a kind of different team than the Craig they've played against in the past. According to Jenn Miller-Yancey, the final score for that game was 48-59, a win for the Wolves.

Wrangell's third and final game was against Lathrop High School of Fairbanks. Being a 4A school, Angerman said that their team had a large pool of players to work with. He pointed out that they had fast guards, and Wrangell was outmanned for the game. Sam Allen, with the Ketchikan Daily News, said the final score was 71-41 in favor of Lathrop.

One spot of good news for the team was that one of their players, Trevor Miller, was named to the All-Tournament team. This means that he was one of the top 10 players for the whole tournament. Angerman said that moving forward, the team is going to focus on getting rebounds and avoiding turnovers. These are some weak spots that became apparent in the tournament, he said.

The Wolves will be hosting an alumni game at the high school gym this Friday evening. Dinner will be at 6 p.m., followed by the game at 7 p.m.

They will be traveling next week, Jan. 10 and 11, for a game against Metlakatla.