JDHS girls to host Kayhi for final conference games

The Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé Crimson Bears girls will get their final look at Southeast Conference foe Ketchikan this week as they host the Lady Kings at 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday inside the George Houston Gymnasium before the two teams go elbow-to-elbow in the Region V tournament in three weeks.

“Every time we play Ketchikan, it doesn’t matter what year, we always expect them to come out with high intensity and high energy,” JDHS girls coach Tanya Nizich said. “And that is good for us. We need to see that. We also need to be a team like that so they teach us something every time we play them.”

The Crimson Bears girls are 12-5 overall and 2-0 in the SEC, and ranked fifth in the state for 4A teams behind Mountain City Christian Academy (Northern Lights Conference), Wasilla (NLC), Colony (NLC) and Bartlett (Cook Inlet Conference). The Lady Kings are 6-11 overall and 0-2 SEC and ranked 16th.

“I am expecting them to be a lot taller than us because I don’t think they have shrunk and I know we haven’t grown,” Ketchikan coach Kelly Smith said good-naturedly. “They are going to put pressure on us and they are going to get out, and try to run and use their athletes, and we’re expecting their best because that is what teams do when they are playing their rivals. No matter how good their rivals are that year they are going to always go at them. We are going to compete. We are not very big but, like I said, our goal is for Juneau to know we are there and for us to get a little better each game. It’s a rivalry game so their crowd is going to be into it, the band will be there, it is going to be loud.”

The JDHS girls defeated the Lady Kings at Ketchikan 58-27 and 67-28 on Jan. 17-18. Their only common opponent to date is state 10th ranked 4A Soldotna. JDHS beat the Stars 62-28 and 63-26 on Jan. 10-11. Kayhi lost to the Stars 32-30 on Jan. 9.

“What we talk about before every game is just going out and playing what we practice,” Nizich said. “And try not to change that because of what an opponent is ranked or is trying to dictate. We have to stick with what we know.”

JDHS is coming off two losses to the visiting defending state champion Wasilla Warriors last weekend, 65-34 and 46-30.

“We learned a lot,” Nizich said. “We learned that in transition defense, when we’re playing a faster, stronger team, that we have to know where our man is 100% of the time and not get beat back on those types of things. I feel like we can definitely fix a lot of the little things that we had problems with…We have been working hard in practice every day and watching film, and trying to learn those things and how we can fix it. Every day from here on out at practice or games we have to set goals, we have to get better and be willing to work, and put forth the effort and I believe we can get there.”

The Lady Kings played in the Dimond Lady Lynx Classic last week losing to North Pole 30-18 and Palmer 47-45, and defeating West Valley 56-26.

“We’ve struggled this year, but hopefully we are finally getting healthy and can compete as Juneau is pretty good,” Smith said. “Our team plays hard, they really do. They compete on the defensive end. We’ve been in games for halves against Bartlett, who is ranked fourth right now, we were in a battle with them, a couple letdowns and it got away from us in the second half. So we are in this to compete.”

The 51-29 loss to Bartlett was in the girls Alaska Airlines Classic Jan. 21-23. The Golden Bears sit atop the 4A Cook Inlet Conference, Dimond is second, West third and Service fourth in the eight-team conference. In that tourney Kayhi also defeated 2A Lumen Christi 50-19 and lost to host West 54-33.

“We’ve got kind of a mix of old kids and young kids that come in,” Smith said. “They are learning how to gel together. We had really good practices this week and there is some excitement.”

The girls series was moved up a day to accommodate the Kayhi team after a tragedy occurred in Ketchikan.

“Thank you to Juneau School District, Julie Herman helped us out with that,” Smith said. “We had a tragedy two weeks ago with a young man that had taken his own life, and we have family on the team and all the kids were friends. The celebration of life is Saturday so if we weren’t able to move those games I probably wouldn’t be bringing about six kids. Big shoutout to the Juneau schools for working with us on that one.”

Thursday and Friday varsity girls home game times are 7 p.m., but Thursday C team play at 3 p.m. and JV at 4:30 p.m. Friday C team play at 4 p.m. and JV at 5:30 p.m.

In the next two weeks the JDHS girls and boys host Monroe Feb. 21-22 and North Pole Feb. 28-March 1.

The Kayhi teams host North Pole Feb. 26-27 and MEHS Feb. 28-March 1. The JDHS girls defeated MEHS 71-54 and 69-54 Jan. 31-Feb. 1.

The Lady Kings will have the advantage of four more games on their home court before the 2025 Region V Championships, which they host in the best-of-three format March 6-8. It is the first time since Sitka dropped down to 3A in 2008-09, the year before Thunder Mountain High School had formed, that the 4A side will be a best-of-three series between two teams.

“I think we all would want more than two teams,” Nizich said. “It is obviously more exciting for everybody to have many teams but when it comes down to it we have us and Ketchikan. I think the double elimination is appropriate…I think there is really no other format we can swing with these two teams so we’re doing it the best way we can. It shortens the week up substantially for kids and just being able to focus on those couple of games versus sometimes in the past you played four.”

Smith said, “Honestly, being part of it for so long the only positive is we don’t have to start on Tuesday night, so you don’t have to leave on Monday. I really don’t like it. Three teams is tough to have a tournament, but we kind of had a really unique thing with Thunder Mountain and Juneau with the bands and all that, and everybody would eventually get a break and can sit back and watch their rivals play which I thought was exciting, and that is kind of gone now. As the tournament director I am glad we are not starting the tournament on Tuesday. Teams don’t have to show up Monday, but the two teams is tough especially on the girls side. Juneau is so favored so we are hoping we can compete with them down here and make them at least a little nervous.”

The JDHS girls have not been together long. Last year the now-defunct Thunder Mountain High School team graduate seven girls and the JDHS team six.

“Absolutely there is a lot to do,” coach Nizich said. “Even though most of them once played together when they were younger we are still building team chemistry.”

• Contact Klas Stolpe at klas.stolpe@juneauempire.com.