Ninilchik goes back-to-back as Class 2A boys state basketball champions

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - The Ninilchik Wolverines won their second straight Class 2A boys basketball state title in convincing fashion Saturday, beating Tikigaq 66-53.

Winning back-to-back championships is one of the hardest things to do in sports, especially at the high school level when most teams lose some of their best players every year to graduation, but for the Ninilchik Wolverines, the workload was spread out.

“It’s a great feeling, you know, just from last year to this year. All the hard work put in by everyone on our team, summers, early morning workouts in the gym, just grinding,” freshman Kade McCorison said.

It can be hard to find the same sort of motivation to repeat after winning the first championship, but according to the seniors on the team, there is plenty of motivation to go around when the team is at the top of the food chain.

“Everyone thought that we were going to be down, to be worse, but we wanted to put in the work so, so we put in the work over the summer and we grinded and we got it,” senior Colvin Moore said.

Moore also noted that while the Tikigaq crowd was very large — taking up nearly three-quarters of the vast Alaska Airlines Center — the Ninilchik fan base was loud and proud and that was all he could hear as they went on to win back-to-back state championships.

Copyright 2023 KTUU. All rights reserved.