
Haines Community Youth Development (CYD) boys’ and girls’ basketball teams took home championship titles in last weekend’s Icebreaker Tournament, held at the Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School in Juneau.
Teams from Angoon, Floyd Dryden, Dzantik’i Heeni, Sitka and Ketchikan competed in the girls’ division. The boys played teams from Ketchikan, Sitka, Floyd Dryden, Dzantik’i Heeni and Yakutat.
Coaches Tiffany DeWitt and Kyle Fossman traveled to Juneau with their teams, along with assistant coaches Tyler Swinton and Chris Dixon.
DeWitt, who has coached the girls’ CYD team for the past seven years, said this was the first time her team won the tournament.
“We have a really fast team and they get along really well,” DeWitt said of her sixth, seventh and eighth-grade players. Fossman said that his team got better as the tournament progressed.
“We played the Ketchikan team the first day in a round-robin and they beat us by 25 points,” he said. In the final game, Ketchikan was seeded first and Haines second.
“We won by six points,” Fossman said.
All-tournament team awards, voted on by the coaches for outstanding performances, were given to Luke Davis, Eric Gillam and Gaelen Allen.
“They were doing a good job of working hard and leading by example,” Fossman said.
From the girls’ team, Grace Long Godinez, McKenzy Dryden and Alison Benda won all- tournament awards for their “amazing defense,” according to DeWitt.
Similarly to the boys’ team, the girls also previously lost to Ketchikan by 25 points earlier in the tournament, but ended up defeating them overall in the championship game.
“Natalie Crager really stepped it up in the last game and was the top scorer for the championship,” DeWitt said. She gave Crager a “Top Scorer Award” a sweatshirt from the tournament. DeWitt said she also gave a special sweatshirt prize to Sophia Cunningham for her defensive work.