Up in Delta Junction, the Bethel Warrior boys basketball team started out winning and didn’t stop, bringing home the Dean Cummings Basketball Championship this weekend. The score at the final buzzer saw the team’s largest winning margin of the weekend: Bethel 77 to Nome 68.
The road to the tourney championship was tough. It started Thursday with a game between the Warrior Boys and the Hutchinson High School Hawks from Fairbanks. Bethel won it by 4 points. The Warriors followed that with a 6 point victory over the Unalaska Raiders, setting up the championship battle on Saturday, which Bethel won by 9 points against Nome.
The Lady Warriors had a tough beginning in the Delta tourney, losing their first game against the Hutchinson Hawks. They fought hard, winning all their other games and taking 4th place in the tournament. Their final winning margin was also their largest during the weekend, but it didn’t start out that way.
It looked like it was going to be a close game when the Lady Warriors faced off against the Seward Seahawks. Coach Eric Jung says that at halftime there were only 4 points separating the two teams. Bethel had the edge with 28, to Seward’s 24. Then the Lady Warriors went into hyper gear in the third quarter. They outran, out-rebounded, and out-shot the Seahawks, ending the game with a score of 59 to 37. Bethel’s Deja Jackson made the all-tourney team.
The Warriors’ next basketball tournament will be this weekend on their home court in Bethel.