newsminer.com

Photo by Eric Engman

FAIRBANKS — Any event with a designated Crisco spreader is definitely a spectator sport.

The greased pole walk at the World Eskimo Indian Olympics delivered plenty of comedy and fun in Thursday afternoon’s rain outside the Carlson Center.

Trying to navigate barefoot along a 6-inch-wide log that was coated in shortening, most competitors hardly moved a muscle before slipping off.

Many of those who got on the pole had second thoughts while still leaning on the two spotters in front and behind them.

“I don’t want to let go!” yelped Amber Genzel of Soldotna as she was gripping her spotter’s forearms.

Genzel, 40, teaches Native games and takes a team to the Native Youth Olympics each year, but she had never tried the greased pole walk until Thursday.

“I’m too old for this!” she said afterward. “I just couldn’t get any traction. It was like walking on a slippery fish.”

Though she has plenty of experience with Native games, this year’s WEIO festivities are the first Genzel has ever competed in. The Athabascan-Tlingit woman who grew up in Fairbanks waited until her daughter Christina turned 12 so they could take part in it together.

Some athletes approached the challenge with a bit more bravery.

Eighteen-year-old Vince Todd went an impressive 57 1/2 inches — second behind James Ollice’s 66 1/2 — though he paid a price for it.

With a “just go” strategy, he shot across the log landed sideways on the grass when his legs slipped out from under him.

The ordeal was too quick for spotter Carol Pickett, whom Todd had loaned a sweatshirt to keep her warm in the breezy afternoon. She could only laugh as he went airborne.

“I gave you my sweatshirt and you didn’t even ...” he said jokingly to Pickett as he stood.

Dajan Treder, a 13-year old Inupaq Eskimo-Aleut, made it look easier than it was, scooting 48 inches along the log with fast steps.

“It was really slippery, and I didn’t think I was going to go so far,” she said, adding that she was a little afraid she was going to fall at first.

The effort got her a second-place finish behind Aurora Warrior’s 56-inch walk.

The lighthearted nature of the event reflected the attitude at WEIO, where competitors don’t battle so much as play, giving each other tips, handshakes and high-fives throughout.

“The camaraderie, the friendship, it’s always the same at any of the Native events,” Genzel said. “It’s kind of like coming home and seeing all of your family that you haven’t seen in a long time.”

At the end of the women’s attempts, paper towels were strewn about the circle of the nearly 100 who were watching. They were the remnants of the pole-walkers furious attempts to get the Crisco out from between their toes.

But as hard as the competitors tried to remove the shortening from their feet, most will have to spend the rest of the day with a slick feeling in their socks.

But Greyson Lee said some people won’t have a problem getting the shortening off.

“If you sweat a lot,” he said with a laugh.

Eskimo stick pull

University of Michigan defensive back Jermaine Jackson, a Bartlett High School graduate, won the Eskimo stick pull in an intense battle of leverage and strength against Matthew Evans.

In the event, two athletes sit facing each other with their feet together and knees bent and try to pull a short stick away from each other.

Evans had a longer reach and a weight advantage, but he needed to defeat Jackson twice in best-of-three rounds. He took the first round, but Jackson won the second.

“What I was thinking was grip, all grip,” Jackson said. “I was losing my grip in the first round.”

He added that his rigorous workout schedule with the Wolverines gave him an advantage.

Jackson took part in the Native Youth Olympics until he left for college, but this is his first time at WEIO. He said the games give him a chance to get in touch with his Native roots, which is something he can’t do often when away from his mother’s village.

“I haven’t been able to do it since high school, so it’s just great to be out here,” he said.

Jackson has impressed his teammates at Michigan with the skills he learned in Native games — especially the one-foot high kick — but he notes that there’s a huge difference between competing in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Alaska.

“You can’t compare (WEIO to college sports),” he said. “These games, it’s more of a community sense and more respect for your teammate and who you’re going against.”

Annette Donaldson won the women’s event by wrestling the stick away from the longer-limbed Donna Bach.