North to Alaska
Friday afternoon 24 Mead players and their coaches are embarking on an adventure. The Panthers are flying to Juneau, Alaska, for a whirlwind weekend of soccer and sight-seeing.
Mead’s varsity will play high school teams from Juneau-Douglas and Anchorage and the junior varsity will also play a game. The players will get to whale watch and visit glaciers before returning on Sunday, said the Panthers’ Cameron Bushey.
“When we first played Juneau (in Spokane), I thought it would be sweet to go there and experience that trip,” Bushey said. “I wish we were staying a few more days and maybe playing another game. But we’re definitely looking forward to it.”
The trip is part of an on-going exchange between Greater Spokane League schools and Alaska power Juneau-Douglas, born of the relationship between its coach Gary Lehnhart and Mead activities coordinator Dick Cullen, who coached Lehnhart 25 years ago on the first men’s soccer team at Whitworth.
Bushey is a fourth-year starting center midfielder for the Panthers. He’s been on a tear of late, nearly single-handedly bringing Mead back from a 3-1 halftime deficit with three goals in a 4-3 win over Lewis and Clark last week. He leads the GSL with six assists.
“He really put the team on his shoulders against LC,” said coach Matt Stueckle. “He understands that he is the leader and when things are not going well it’s up to him to get the team going.”
The Panthers find themselves in the middle of a multiteam GSL title chase despite graduating 13 seniors.
Stueckle said Bushey has matured as a player and attracted further college interest after playing last summer for his uncle on a club team in Colorado.
But he intends to play at Whitworth where his father, Sean, has turned the Pirates into a NCAA Division III power. Stueckle also assists there.
“I figure after I graduate I’ll have played 10 years with ‘Sticks,’ ” said Cameron, second-team All-GSL a year ago. “I’ll have no trouble (playing for) dad. We both know what I need to do to get it done.”
Preparing for the Alaska trip has been a time-consuming event for those involved, from gaining district approval to working out the details and raising the necessary funds.
“It’s been a hectic couple of months,” said Stueckle. “It’s been nose to the grindstone planning everything out.”
Juneau-Douglas has annually come here to play GSL teams during spring break. This spring the foes included Central Valley and Ferris. Ferris’ Saxons have been to Juneau, but this is Mead’s first such soccer such trip.
The genesis was the relationship between Cullen, Mead’s successful coach before going into administration, and Lehnhart.
“We’ve hosted a Juneau team 15 years in a row,” Cullen said. “The teams up there love coming here.”
Cullen enjoys going there, for several years part of a contingent of coaches, including Ferris’ Robin Crain, that has conducted sports camps in July and fished in their spare time,
“We coach, fish, cook and eat,” said Cullen of the annual trip. “We’ve slept in a bunkhouse, cook on open fires and have a blast.”
They’ve brought home as much as 80 or 90 pounds of fish and have even helped a crabber process his catch. The reward is a late-August crab feed.
Cullen said that Juneau now has a field turf soccer stadium after years of playing on dirt.
“It’s either dusty or muddy there, take your pick,” he said.
Mead’s soccer team will taste the experience, although the trip seemed remote until the Juneau soccer club that helps fund high school athletes there provided $4,500. The rest of the cost to players came from fund-raising and out of pocket.
“It’s going to be a neat deal,” Cullen said. “It is a really inexpensive trip. The only problem is that Robin said that when they came back from there, Ferris never won another game.”
That kind of jet lag is something the Panthers can do without.