By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Sports Editor
In recognition of her coaching work with high school wrestlers, Mt. Edgecumbe High alumna Deedee Creed was named Assistant Coach of the Year for the female division at the state championship meet in Anchorage Saturday.
While she isn’t particularly vocal while guiding athletes from the sidelines, Creed told the newspaper her coaching style is what makes her stand out. She is one of MEHS’ two assistant coaches this season.
“I’m a pretty quiet person,” Creed said. “When I’m on the sidelines, I can’t yell very loud. And so on the sidelines, I’m almost wrestling the match myself, I’m moving in the positions, trying to arch my back if someone’s getting pinned,” she said in a phone interview. “I think it’s pretty noticeable, because I’m very in the match that I’m coaching.”
When the season opened two months ago, Creed “didn’t expect to get quite as invested as I did, but I learned a lot from our head coach, Aaron Routon, and from our other assistant coach, Courtney Howard... That made me more invested as a coach and made me see the potential of the team,” she said, “because we kind of started the season as the underdogs and ended up doing better than we hoped.”
In recent years, the Lady Braves have fielded a full wrestling squad, and over the weekend the team earned 15th place out of 55 teams in the state competition. The MEHS boys team surged to eighth place among 49 teams.
As a student Creed wrestled for Mt. Edgecumbe High between 2010 and 2014, a period when there was no independent girls’ classification in Alaska, and female wrestlers competed against boys.
“Coming back to the state of Alaska this year, and seeing how much the sport has grown was really inspiring,” said Creed. “I remember my senior year on the second day of weigh-ins, I would be the only girl weighing in. And now in some of the tournaments that we’ve gone to, there’s been, like, 200 girls, and that makes me really proud of the state for making that decision to sanction girls’ wrestling.”
Her recognition as the female division assistant coach of the year came as a surprise.
“We were sitting around, waiting to hear who was made the OW - the outstanding wrestler. So we were waiting for that,” she recalled, “and everyone had kind of already cleared the gym. And then I heard my name called and I was just very surprised.”
Originally from Kotzebue, Creed took up wrestling in elementary school, alongside her twin brother. At Mt. Edgecumbe High, under the tutelage of longtime MEHS wrestling coach Mike Kimber, she twice earned fifth place in the 98-pound weight class at the state championship meet. As a senior, Creed coached Sitka Tsunami and middle school wrestlers. The year after she graduated, the Alaska School Activities Association created a girls’ division in high school wrestling.
Creed wrestled at Warner Pacific University in Oregon, and coached in Utah until the pandemic shut down sports across the country in 2020.
After returning to Sitka recently, Creed’s personal connection to Mt. Edgecumbe drew her back into the sport.
“This year specifically, I chose to coach because I hadn’t coached since 2020 had ended our season in Utah,” she said. “And I probably wouldn’t have coached except I had a car accident, about a year and a half ago, and the Edgecumbe community really pulled together for me. The EMT on the job was my old math teacher. The officer was one of my old wrestling coaches, and the Edgecumbe community raised a bunch of money to help me pay for medical bills. And so I wanted to give back and the only way I can really think of giving back is by coaching this year, and it’s really cool that I got to coach some of the relatives of some of the people that helped me through.”
Her colleagues at MEHS are glad to have Creed back with the team.
“We are lucky to have her,” wrestling coach Aaron Routon wrote in a text. “She is a great wrestler and great coach. She empowers our girls and can challenge any wrestler in the region head-to-head… It has been a game changer to have a female mentor that girls feel comfortable talking to.”
Mt. Edgecumbe activities principal Andrew Friske praised Creed for her work with the wrestling team.
She is “a super hard worker, is knowledgeable about the sport and brings a contagious, positive energy to the team,” Friske said. “As a former wrestler and MEHS alumnus Deedee is a wonderful role model for both our girls and boys wrestlers. It’s rare for our alumni to move back and live in Sitka. Having someone like Deedee for our kids to relate to and ask questions is invaluable, on and off the mat. Deedee’s recognition is well deserved.”
Creed has plans for expanding her work as a wrestling mentor.
“We’re looking to do little mini-tournaments with our kids just to keep them excited about wrestling,” she said. “And then I would like to do some coaching with the Bruins. So I’m going to… do a spring season with the club in Sitka, and then I’m (also) at the middle school.”
She hopes her accolade as Assistant Coach of the Year helps the Braves team in fundraising.
“I’d like to do some fundraising for our team so that we can have better team gear and maybe help kids with food on trips and be able to afford better meals and stuff on trips,” she said.
Creed hopes to keep inspiring female wrestlers.
“It’s been awesome to see how much it’s grown as a sport, because the sport has done a lot for me,” she said. “And having it sanctioned (in Alaska) for females - as well as having seen 200 girls in the state wrestling - gives me a lot of hope that a lot of it’ll empower girls to go after careers that may be more male dominated.”
