<\/a>A traditional bearded seal blanket borrowed from the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics waits a toss demonstration during the lunch hour in the Thunder Mountain High School gymnasium on Friday, March 15, 2019. (Michael Penn | Juneau Empire)<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t
TMHS sophomore Tiana Ault was one of the last lucky students to get on the blanket, and was still smiling 10 minutes after she finished.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“It’s a lot like jumping on the trampoline but you’re not jumping,” she said. “You’re having people pull you up. You’re getting the same air as you do on a trampoline but it’s different because you’re getting pulled this time. You have no ability to jump because it pushes you up.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Worl thinks it’s the first time an authentic Iñupiat blanket has made it to Juneau. He said blankets are difficult to make and the materials needed to make them like bearded seal skins are difficult to acquire. Thus, there isn’t an abundance of them in the state, let alone south of the Arctic Circle.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Shannon Hawkins, lead official for this weekend’s Traditional Games, borrowed the blanket from WEIO, an annual Alaska Native sporting festival that counts the blanket toss as one of its events. In the blanket toss, athletes are judged for the height and style in which they jump, as well as whether they land on their feet. Many contestants can do front flips and back flips.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“I think getting as much exposure between NYO and WEIO is great for any event,” Hawkins said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\u2022 Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nainsworth@juneauempire.com. Follow Empire Sports on Twitter at @akempiresports.<\/b><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
<\/p>\n\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Watch a blanket toss. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":44679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":11,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[75,319],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-44678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home2","category-news","tag-local-news","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44678"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=44678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}