By Jeff Brady

For the News

The SHS basketball teams completed Southeast 1A regular season play with a fairly successful week-long trip to Prince of Wales Island. Both boys and girls squads appear to be locked into second place seeding for the region tourney at the end of this month. 

The boys are 9-3 in league play, while the girls are 7-3. They have completed their home slates, except for non-conference girls and JV boys games this weekend against Porter Creek of Whitehorse.

After three tries in January, Kake finally made it to Skagway Jan. 27-28 – and didn’t seem too worn out by all of the ferry attempts. The Skagway girls easily knocked off Kake in their opener, but allowed the Thunderbirds to even the series the next day. And the T-bird boys, the 2023 state champs and 2024 runner-up, showed they are still a force and prevailed over a good Skagway team.

In the girls’ opener, senior Kaitlyn Tronrud had her best game of the year, scoring 15 of her game-high 26 points by halftime. Fellow senior point guard Kenadie Cox led the SHS defense, which shut out Kake in the first quarter and led 18-4 at the break. Led by two players with 7 points each, Kake was able to narrow the deficit to 33-23 at the final buzzer. The T-birds did a better job defensively in the rematch, playing Skagway even through three quarters. After leading 15-14 at half and 24-21 at the end of Q3, Skagway went into a shooting slump at the wrong time, allowing Kake to nab a 30-28 win. Brooklyn Hallinstad led Kake with 15, while Tronrud had 17 to lead the Lady Panthers.

The Skagway boys were short-handed with starter Malcolm Lawson sidelined with an ankle injury, but it was Kake’s tight zone defense that frustrated the top Panther scorers. Skagway was down by 9 at the end of the first half of both games. In the opener, Skagway made a run in the final quarter to cut the lead in half, but lost 59-50. Kake’s Keontay Jackson scored 21 before fouling out, while Skagway was led by the trio of Kaleb Cochran (13), Camden Lawson (12), and senior Landon Rodig (11). Skagway played better to start the second game of the series, taking a 10-9 lead, but Kake rallied at the end of the half to go up 27-18. The teams played even in the third, but like the girls, hit a shooting slump in the fourth quarter. The final score, 57-36, was Kake’s biggest lead of the game. Cam Lawson led Skagway with 18 points, while Jackson hit 31 for the T-birds.

Between games during a ceremony on senior night, SHS coaches Ross Barrett and Nate Jennings praised their seniors: Landon Rodig, Kenadie Cox and Kaitlyn Tronrud (see photos with what the coaches said on page 8).

On Prince of Wales, the Panther boys swept Hydaburg (50-47, 65-52), 

split with Klawock (67-46, 44-47), and crushed Thorne Bay (65-16, 72-14). They then added one more impressive win over 2A Craig, 62-52.

The Lady Panthers swept Hydaburg (63-22, 55-17), fell to Klawock (34-46, 22-39), and lost to 2A Craig (27-45, 43-57).

Both teams will have two weeks of good practice time before heading to Juneau for region tourney at Thunder Mountain Feb. 26-March 1.