By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
Cuts to the Alaska Marine Highway System have left Southeast schools choosing between difficult and expensive options for team travel, a number of school officials tell the Sentinel.
“Ferry cuts are killing our C/JV sports programs. We have to fly every place now,” Sitka High Activities Director Rich Krupa said.
“Right now we don’t even use it (AMHS) because the ferry system doesn’t work out for us,” he said. The combination of higher fares and reduced sailings have forced local teams to use Alaska Airlines, he said.
School District Superintendent Mary Wegner agreed, telling the Sentinel that “a couple of years ago we started losing a lot of ferry service to Sitka... we have really stopped using the ferry, because the schedule doesn’t work.”
That hasn’t always been the case, remembers Wolves’ volleyball coach Zaide Allen.
“I was born and raised here,” Allen said, “and through my job and through sports I have been able to travel to I think every single Southeast Alaskan community that ferry service reaches.”
“I remember being on the ferry almost every single volleyball trip,” she noted. “As a C-team player we got three trips a year, we were traveling all the time.”
But in the 2019 volleyball season, Allen said that the Wolves’ C-team only traveled once, and that was courtesy of Allen Marine.
“Thank goodness we have Mt. Edgecumbe to play, otherwise our C-team would not have very many games,” she said.
Krupa added that “in the past we’d take our varsity basketball, JV basketball, and C-team and take them to different communities... and that’s just not an option (anymore).”
The increased dependence on air travel for sports teams has increased the cost of travel as well.
“The district only pays coaches’ salaries,” Wegner said. “The entire bulk of all of the travel comes from what the city provides to the students to support the travel, and what the students raise.”
“The burden is placed on our community,” Allen said. “Where we were raising money for a $40 ferry ticket, now we’re raising for a $200, at the minimum, plane ticket just to go to Juneau, and that’s just per kid. And you do the math on that, and it’s kind of scary.”
But Allen said the reduced ferry service is hurting a lot more than school athletics.
“I think it’s really sad that this is happening,” she said, “because a lot of these (small) communities... you can’t get this type of life anywhere else, and I think that with having no ferries go to those communities it’s actually threatening their existence.”
Wegner is also well aware of the big picture of Southeast transportation.
“I think about health and safety in a community like Angoon,” she said. “With an elderly population, how are they going to get around without the ferry?”
“We at least have Alaska Airlines,” Allen said. “I cannot imagine those small towns, like Angoon and Hoonah.”
But all of Southeast will feel the impact of the ferry cutbacks, and in that regard, she said, “Everyone is in the same boat.”
There was more bad news Thursday when the ferry system announced that the M/V Aurora, one of the smaller vessels that are the transportation lifeline within Southeast, would enter long-term layup starting in January. The announcement said that 24 employees would be “relieved of service” as a result.
“It was determined that significantly more repair work was required than originally budgeted and AMHS does not have the funds,” the service said in a press release.
“Part of the reason we’ve increased the fares is to make the system more self-sustainable, and that reduced budget is the result of negotiations between the legislature and the governor,” Ferry system Public Information Officer Sam Dapcevich told the Sentinel. “The AMHS is facing big challenges because we have an aging fleet, repair needs.”
