SIVU

This weekend was the annual SIVU basketball tournament. SIVU means "the beginning" in Inupiaq. I believe it is in reference to the beginning of whale or seal hunting but I am not entirely sure. It also means the front of the boat. There were five men's teams and four women's teams. Teller, Buckland, Selawik, Kivalina, and Noatak. Every team played everybody once. It just happened to work out that the last games of the last night ended up being for the championship. It was Noatak verse Kivalina in mens and womens. The women won by seven in a low scoring tightly called game. Noatak held Kivalina to four points in the second half and the final was 41-34. Kayla is helping coach the womens team so she felt a little bit better that she was able to be here for the tournament. The mens championship was another close game. Noatak held a comfortable lead up to the fourth quarter but then Kivalina went on a run to start the fourth and Noatak couldn't recover. The final was something like 70-65. It is a different style basketball here. A lot of zone defense's to go with a wide open, fast paced style of playing.
We were supposed to fly out of here on Friday to head home for Christmas. That did not happen. All flights were canceled that fly out of the village. Its Sunday and there haven't been any planes since Thursday. To compound matters when we tried to reschedule our flights with Alaska Air all of the flights from Anchorage were booked until Wednesday. We are still going to try to make it home for Christmas but it will just be a little bit shorter. We are definitely going to have to try to relax while we are still in Noatak because I have a feeling that it will be quite the whirlwind when we get back.

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