3 new names enter Alaska Sports Hall of Fame

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Three new names were announced Tuesday as the latest inductees into the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame.

The hall announced the following new names:

• Professional bowler Sean Rash
• Former UAA basketball star Butch Lincoln
• Renowned backcountry adventurer Dick Griffith

In the Moments category, two new entries were announced:

• Teen runner Ephriam Kalmakoff setting the Mount Marathon course record in 1928
• East Anchorage beating Bartlett in triple overtime to win the 4A state basketball championship in 1993

The induction ceremony is scheduled for spring 2026 at the Anchorage Museum, according to hall of fame officials.

Sean Rash

Rash made a name for himself in Alaska’s bowling alleys but also made a splash on the national scene.

The 43-year-old Anchorage bowler who attended Dimond High School went pro in 2005 and has won 18 Professional Bowling Association championships, as well as the 2011-12 PBA Player of the Year title.

Rash has bowled 30 perfect games, according to the hall, and has won over $1.5 million in career earnings.

More recently, Rash entered the top-20 in the PBA’s all-time win list after winning a match in Sweden while overcoming a right-hand injury.

Butch Lincoln

A 5-foot-7 point guard who led the Kotzebue boys basketball team to a high school state championship in 1990, Lincoln became the first Alaska Native to play hoops on a college scholarship at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Lincoln’s days at UAA spanned from 1993 to 1997, when he helped the Seawolves win 69 games and three Pac West Conference crowns, as well as three appearances at the NCAA tournament.

At the 1996 Great Alaska Shootout — a former hoops tournament that attracted major college teams to Alaska — Lincoln put on a show against the vaunted Kentucky Wildcats, as he “zigged and zagged” around the defense, according to the Alaska Sports Report.

Lincoln ultimately wound up in the top-10 lists of UAA men’s basketball, ranking seventh all time in career assists (325) and sixth all time in career free-throw percentage (.854).

Lincoln’s performances were enough to earn him a spot on Sports Illustrated’s 1999 list of greatest sports figures of the 20th Century from Alaska.

Dick Griffith

Known as the “adventurer’s adventurer,” Griffith made a name for himself trekking thousands of miles across Alaska and Canada over his long life, including some routes never before completed by humans.

Griffith died on Dec. 2 at his home in Anchorage at the age of 98.

The Anchorage resident who grew up on a farm in Wyoming was known around the 49th state as having pioneered the use of the packraft in Alaska’s backcountry. Griffith used a packraft in the inaugural running of the Alaska Wilderness Classic in 1982, a grueling race that tested runners to cross Alaska’s rugged wilderness over distances of 150 miles or more.

In all, Griffith was a 17-time finisher of the race.

Roman Dial, an Alaskan adventurer himself, described Griffith as “Clint Eastwood in tennis shoes and a backpack” in a recent obituary posted on the Alaska Sports Report.

Along with his late wife Isabelle, Griffith made the first complete trip down the Grand Canyon on an inflatable raft in 1951.

Griffith was also known for his numerous long-distance hiking and skiing trips across thousands of miles of Alaska and Canada’s northern arctic. In 1977, he made the first complete documented traverse of the Brooks Range from Kaktovik to Kotzebue with Bruce Stafford, a friend of his, according to Dial.

In his later years, Griffith made several attempts to ski from Unalakleet to Hudson Bay in Canada, a 4,000-mile trip. He completed the trip at the age of 73.

PBS released a documentary in 2018 named “Canyons & Ice: The Last Run of Dick Griffith,” detailing his final whitewater rafting trip through the Grand Canyon.

Moment: Ephriam Kalmakoff wins 1928 Mount Marathon race

As a young teenager, Kalmakoff beat the field of runners at the 1928 Mount Marathon race in Seward to set a course record that stood for decades.

His time of 52 minutes, 35 seconds, up and down the roughly 3,000-foot mountain sliced more than 2 1/2 minutes off the previous record and wasn’t broken until 1957.

What made it even more remarkable was Kalmakoff’s age — records are incomplete but put him between ages 14 and 16 — and his small stature; the Alaska Sports Report described Kalmakoff as slipping “under the rope at the finish line rather than running through it.”

Kalmakoff was raised at the Jesse Lee Home in Seward, a boarding school for displaced children. When he won the race in 1928, he did so wearing his Boy Scout uniform.

Tragically, Kalmakoff contracted tuberculosis after his third race win and died in 1935.

Moment: East beats Bartlett in 3OT to win 4A state hoops title in 1993

A “game for the ages” played out in front of 3,200 fans at West Anchorage High School for the 1993 state championship, according to the Alaska Sports Report.

It took three overtimes — all of which featured thrilling game-tying buckets or free throws — to decide the title in favor of the Thunderbirds, 92-90.

At the time, East was nationally-ranked with former NBA player Trajan Langdon leading the T-Birds. Langdon netted a jumpshot with 28 seconds left in regulation to tie the game at 79-all and force the first overtime period.

Bartlett’s Cager Ector forced the second OT with a jumper of his own with one second left in the first overtime.

A free-throw shot by Langdon with 36 seconds left in the second OT tied it and led to a third OT period.

In the final period, Mark Schweigert connected on a jumpshot with six seconds left to clinch the victory for East.

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