Nome Nanooks place third at 3A Basketball State Championships
The Nome Nanooks, winners of the last two 3A state basketball titles, began the season with hopes of making it three in a row. But the three-peat was stopped by the Barrow Whalers in the semi-final of the state tournament.
A strong Barrow team downed the Nanooks 60-53 behind the exceptional play of Alex Fruean, an 11th grader.
“Obviously he had a ton of points,” said Nome Head Coach Pat Callahan. “He’s their best player. He had a great game, he shot well from the free-throw line. He was 15 for 20 from the free throw line. If you look at the box score he had a real fast start.”
The Nanooks trailed the Whalers until early in the third period when they went ahead. “We had a three-point lead in the third quarter,” said Callahan. “And then things just didn’t go our way.”
“Barrow is a tough team,” said Nanook Assistant Coach Jon Gregg. “I’d say Barrow has three or four really good players. They’re really athletic and the big guy is a tough cover for us. They’re a quality opponent and we’re lucky to have them in our league.”
The Nanooks finished the championship in third place after a victory over the Sitka Wolves, a team they’d lost to twice earlier in the season. The final score in that game was 73-55.
“This is a group that is accustomed to winning,” said Coach Gregg. “That is part of the tradition we’ve been building. That makes Saturday morning even tougher.” Saturday morning at 8 a.m. was the Sitka-Nome game for third place. “But I’ve got to say that to have these kids come out and play with that kind of pride and that kind of character that means the world to me. They really showed up this morning.”
“We’d lost twice to Sitka down there,” said Coach Callahan. “So this was a good game for us to have a little momentum going into next season. Our core group of juniors is really good. They’ve got to find a couple JVs to pull up. They love the game, are super dedicated, balanced. Today we really followed our game plan that we wanted to do which was push the ball in transition and get after them in the full court.”
“This team is pretty young,” said Gregg. “We’re returning the major core of the team. Obviously, we’re going to miss the contributions from the seniors that we had.”
What’s planned for the off-season? In a few weeks the Nanooks will hit the gym for weight training. They’ll go to a basketball camp in June and in the summer will run their own camp for young players from the region, the Nanook Basketball Camp. Every year Coach Callahan takes a group of players to Warburg College in Waverly, Iowa for a camp. And after the camp they pick up some games around the state of Iowa. In the fall it’s back to the weights in the gym. “The core group is dedicated to all that,” said Coach Callahan.
The first high school state basketball championship was in 1929 when Fairbanks met Petersburg. Nome first won in 1964 and followed up with a win in 1965. Nome’s next state title was in 2022 when they defeated Grace Christian. This was followed by the 2024 victory over Mt Edgecumbe and last year’s win over Sitka.