Matthew Quinto stood on an animal skin blanket held taut off the ground by a ring of people. Slowly, they started to pull the blanket out and then in. Quinto got ready to leap.
As everyone holding the blanket pulled it tight, Quinto jumped frighteningly high in the air, did a backflip, and landed back on the blanket.
“Originally, it was used as a way of lookout over villages in the arctic tundra,” Quinto said later.
The backflip was just a bonus.
Last weekend, athletes from across Alaska — and some from the Lower 48 — came to Juneau to compete in the seventh annual Traditional Games, held at Yadaa.at Kalé Juneau Douglas High School.
The events represent fitness needed for survival and hunting skills in the arctic. But in the gym, the athletes tried to beat their own best scores.
The blanket toss was the first event. Quinto, who coaches for traditional games and Native Youth Olympics, said he only gets to do it a couple of times a year.
“It’s just something we do for fun,” he said. “We can’t really practice it because it takes a whole community to hold the blanket.”
Daanawáaḵ Ezra Elisoff announced the games. He’s an athlete himself. He said each event requires many different skills.
“There’s agility, there’s explosive strength, there’s flexibility, there’s just a lot of different things. And all the games are different in their own unique way, of course,” Elisoff said.
But his favorite is the Alaskan high kick.
For that event, athletes get into position on the ground with one arm supporting them, grab one foot, and then launch their other foot up to try and reach a ball suspended in the air. If they touch it, officials raise it a bit higher and higher — until the athlete misses.
“That one’s about your technique and how much you can perfect it rather than pure strength and flexibility and whatnot,” Elisof said. “You can out-kick a lot of people once you start going what we call vertical, which is like a one-handed handstand.”
Luka Silva officiated some of the events. He said it’s been exciting to see young people push themselves to beat their own records.
“I’ve heard a lot of like, ‘Wow I can’t believe I just did that. I’m so proud of myself.’”
Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka beat out other high schools for Best Overall Team. They won seven high school events.
Tessa Anderson won the Overall Athlete title for high school girls. Her favorite event is the scissor broad jump — jumping as far as she can in four steps, as if leaping from ice floe to ice floe.
“I just like the feeling of the pattern of jumping, I don’t know how to explain it,” Anderson said.
She won the high school girls scissor broad jump category.
Anderson’s teammate Lennie Brandell said that the camaraderie and support from other athletes is part of what makes Traditional Games so special.
“Everyone comes together, we’re all nice, no one’s ever talking trash to you. It’s always upbringing,” he said.
This year, athletes broke 13 records in different categories. About 260 athletes from 31 different schools participated — 200 more than the first Traditional Games in 2018.
