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WEIO 2008

Scenes from the 2008 World Eskimo-Indian Olympics in Fairbanks.

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Photo by Eric Engman

Erica Meckel got some major air as an unofficial entrant in Friday night’s blanket toss.

“Great ride!” she exclaimed afterward.

But Meckel didn’t need any help to fly earlier, when she won gold in the women’s two-foot kick at the World Eskimo Indian Olympics at the Carlson Center.

The two-foot kick requires athletes to jump, kick a ball suspended by a string with both feet and land without separating their feet.

If it looked like she had good rhythm while she kicked 71 inches, that’s because she was singing songs in her head throughout the competition.

She supplemented those tunes with frequent trips to her iPod at the corner of the hardwood floor.

“I was listening to some reggae, some acid rock, anything loud and fast,” she said. “It keeps me pumped.”

Though she was generally stoic on the court, Meckel was loose on the sidelines, at one point dancing shoulder-to-shoulder with silver medalist Amber Vaska.

Aurora Warrior, frequently popping a wad of bubble gum as she competed, took third with a height of 64 inches, which she hit in the preliminaries.

Vaska couldn’t connect at 69 inches, and Meckel decided to push her limits one inch at a time.

She hit a snag at 70 inches, missing her first two attempts, but judge Carol Pickett-Hall had the cure.

Hall told Meckel she was approaching the ball too fast and jumping too far forward as a result. On her way back, Hall made an exaggerated kick at the ball and lightened the mood for Meckel.

On her next try, Meckel made the adjustment and got a solid vertical leap.

With the change in technique, her 71-inch kick looked effortless.

The next height, 72 inches, seemed to be just a bit out of her reach, though she hit it in an unofficial attempt after missing three times.

Men’s two-foot kick

Despite the cost of travel these days, Phillip Blanchett knew he had to be in Fairbanks this week.

He had to show his daughters — Tun’aqui, 11, and Ivalu, 5 — what WEIO was like.

“I want them to be here, and that’s how I want them to be involved in our community and learn about cultures and get involved with dancing,” he said, “just by being in that environment naturally and not it being weird or pushed upon them.”

In the process, he also got to prove that at age 33 he could still hang with the 20-somethings dominating the tougher competitions at WEIO.

He earned the silver in the two-foot kick behind Karl Frankson of Point Hope. Both men could not reach 94 inches, but Frankson has fewer misses at 92 inches to win the gold.

“It sometimes depends on who’s here,” he said. “Sometimes you luck out. It was a good competition this year.”

Blanchett has competed in WEIO since he was 16, but back then, he had his doubts about being able to do the two-foot kick.

“I was really fascinated when I saw it, but I thought I couldn’t do it,” he said.

He gave it a try anyway and was able to perform the maneuver by the time he attended his second WEIO at 17.

Blanchett also enjoys WEIO because it displays the unique brand of athleticism that is found in villages like Frankson’s Point Hope.

“I’m from the city, so I work out and do yoga, but those guys are actually moving heavy stuff when it’s like 20 below,” Blanchett said, “and that creates a whole ’nother type of physicality and abilities.”

Indian stick pull

There were plenty of theories on how to properly grip the greasy wooden stick in the Indian stick pull, but gold medalist Corey Katairoak doesn’t put too much thought into it.

“Just grab it and pull straight back,” said Katairoak, 34. “No twisting. No jerking. Just pull it straight back and you’ll get it.”

It didn’t seem so easy for many who took part in the event, which requires athletes to wreslte over a tapered stick coated in shortening (bear fat was used in the original game).

The stick pull is one of the few events that doesn’t favor size or strength, so it was not uncommon to see small kids defeating some of the fittest adults in the building.

Katairoak is still getting used to the newest rule — in which the competitors’ hands start an inch apart instead of touching in the middle — but it didn’t seem to hamper him as he wrenched the greased stick away from silver medalist Dorian Traylor.

When Marjorie Tahbone and Amber Glenzel sat with their legs overlapped in the final women’s Indian stick pull match, it took a while for them to settle down.

The two kept joking with each other and delaying the match, not that it mattered much to either of them.

Glenzel was able to yank away the shortening-coated stick in two tries. The two knew each other well from when Glenzel’s daughter Christina, 12, was a teammate with 19-year-old Tahbone at this year’s Arctic Winter Games in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.

“We’ve known each other for a few years now,” Tahbone said. “I’m really happy for her.”