Mike Blewett, a coach and administrator who was part of Alaska’s sports scene for nearly half a century, died last week at age 71.
He was best known as the architect of Alaska Pacific University’s short-lived but vibrant athletic department during the 1980s and as the assistant director of the Alaska School Activities Association for most of the 1990s.
Blewett died Tuesday in Medford, Oregon, from complications of diabetes, his son, Pierce, said.
Blewett was a basketball coach for much of his life, guiding high school and college teams in Sitka (at SheldonJackson 1966-69, and Sitka High 2002-05), Tanana and Anchorage as well as in Oregon and Washington.
Twice he served as the head basketball coach for Anchorage’s only private university.
Blewett coached the men’s team at Alaska Methodist University for four years in the 1970s, until the school closed in 1976.
AMU reopened as Alaska Pacific University in 1978, and in 1986 Blewett was hired to begin an NAIA program at the school.
For four years, APU fielded teams in men’s basketball, women’s basketball, volleyball and wrestling, until school trustees abruptly dropped athletics in the spring of 1990.
APU enjoyed success in every sport but women’s basketball. As the men’s basketball coach, Blewett recruited a blend of Alaska and out-of-state athletes, including one — the late Geno Morgan of Chicago — who became an assistant coach for Blewett before forging his own outstanding coaching career.
Between AMU and APU, Blewett spent two years as the head coach at Warner Pacific University in Portland, Oregon, and one year as a volunteer assistant at Seattle Pacific University.
He also took a break from coaching during that stretch to return to his family’s home in Idaho in order to take care of his ailing father and run the family’s cattle and wheat farm. He created a long-haul trucking business during that time too.
After APU dropped sports, Blewett worked as an assistant basketball coach at UAA for one year before beginning nearly a decade-long run with ASAA.
From 1990 to 1999, he served as ASAA’s assistant director, a stretch during which he helped orchestrate the creation of what’s now known as March Madness Alaska, which brings all of Alaska’s high school basketball championship tournaments together in the same week at the same gymnasium in Anchorage.
After leaving ASAA, Blewett coached boys basketball in Tanana and Sitka High. He spent his final three seasons, 2002-05, as a coach at Sitka, a job that took him back to Southeast Alaska where over the years he spent many summers working on commercial fishing boats.
In fact, his coaching career began in Sitka. At age 21, Blewett became the basketball coach at Sheldon Jackson High School in 1966. When Sheldon Jackson transitioned from a high school to a junior college a year later, he began an intercollegiate basketball team for the school.
Born in 1944 in Lewiston, Idaho, Blewett is survived by his wife, Janis Sierra-Blewett, and four sons — Ryan, Tyler, Pierce and Nelson.
