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Petersburg High School hosted homecoming last weekend – the Petersburg Vikings playing basketball against their longtime rivals, the Wrangell Wolves. The Wolves won three out of four varsity games, but the players – and the fans – brought a lot of spirit.
Rick Brock coaches the boys basketball team in Petersburg. He said it’s a treat to play home games.
“The crowd was great, [and] our pep band is always awesome,” he said.
And there was extra hoopla this time – it was homecoming, after all.
The Petersburg dance team performed. So did a floor full of tiny, aspiring cheerleaders. There were raffles, dessert auctions, and of course, the homecoming court — with queen Iris Case pink-cheeked in her basketball uniform and king Elias Ward coming down from the pep band stands where he’d been playing saxophone.
There was also a performance by senior Adrian Ducat, who played an upside-down drum solo, hanging face-up with his knees over the shoulders of a friend, while two bandmates held an inverted drum set.
He said afterward that he didn’t do any ab workouts to get in shape for the trick.
“My main concern wasn’t really my core, it was mainly, like, me not passing out,” he said. “Because, you know, all the blood’s going the wrong way because you’re upside down.”
Coach Brock said he tells his team they’re lucky – it’s not like this everywhere.
“We play all over the state, and the energy – especially during homecoming, but on a typical night, the energy that our crowd generates is helpful,” he said. “And what a great experience for them to play in front of.”
Brock said that energy helped give the boys a boost. They were coming off a double loss in their first conference games in Craig, but Brock said they played harder and were more focused during the home games.
“It seems like we are playing with more confidence for longer stretches – it seems like that’s the progress that we’re making,” he said.
The boys lost both games, but they were neck and neck with Wrangell for much of Friday night.
“We were right in the game,” said Brock. “Right in the fourth quarter, and then from that point on, Wrangell turned up the pressure on us, and we didn’t respond to it. We missed makeable free throws, makeable shots.”
They lost 36 to 57. Brock said a lot of that has to do with confidence.
“Sometimes there are moments in the game when you get tired or start doubting yourself and you kind of let the other team dictate what’s going on,” he said. “And that was what was happening on Friday.”
But he said the boys played well on Saturday, fighting hard for possession of the ball.
The game was close, but Brock said Wrangell made a few big shots at the end, and the Vikings didn’t. They lost 34 to 45. Still, Brock said he feels good about where the team is headed – he said he’s seen a lot of growth just since the games two weekends ago in Craig.
“I think we’re at about 70% of where we can get to,” he said. “So I think this team has a lot of growth, a lot of possibilities for growth. Our job, as coaches and players, is to get us to that place.”
The Lady Vikings had the only Varsity win of the weekend on Friday night. But coach Matt Pawuk said it didn’t come easy.
“We struggled to get off to a good start again, and ended up getting down by double digits. We made some adjustments, and the adjustments seemed to work,” he said. “We battled our way back and ended up winning kind of a nail biter at the end – it came down to the final seconds of the game.”
Pawuk said he didn’t make any substitutions in the final three and half minutes – way longer than he’d usually leave players in – because the five teammates were clicking so well on the court. The Vikings won by two points, 36 to 34.
But Saturday night was a different story. The Wrangell Lady Wolves won 47 to 33.
“Some nights a team is just the better team,” Pawuk said. “They just shot the ball really well, and you just kind of have to say, yep, you guys you beat my game plan tonight.”
He said he thinks the fact that Wrangell was shooting the ball so well was a little deflating for the team, it made it tough to keep up the confident energy from the night before. He said this week, he’s having the girls do drills aimed at making them comfortable with aggression.
“Petersburg kids are just too nice, which is a great problem to have,” he said. “I want them to be super nice off the court, and I don’t want to be mean on the court, but they need to match the intensity level of their opposition.”
The Vikings will have another shot at beating the Wolves when Wrangell hosts their homecoming at the end of February.
That gives Wrangell’s pep band six weeks to master the art of drumming upside down.
