by Bob Hammond, Senior Writer WyoSports, Laramie Boomerang, May 4, 2010

It was back in 1965 when UW basketball legend and hall of famer Kenny Sailors started the girls basketball program at Glennallen High in Alaska.

"When I first went up there, they didn't have any sports for girls in the schools. There was no money...no tax base...before the pipeline," Sailors recalled. "I had a daughter, and she was a pretty good athlete, and that disturbed me."

so Sailors brough his game to Glennallen, a small Alaskan burg 189 miles east of Anchorage.

"The old superintendent there at Glennallen said that one of the things he wanted to do was get girls sports going in high school, especially basketball," Sailors said. "We started out playing that half-court nonesense the girls used to play, and they had those bloomer things they wore.

"So I told him right off, 'We have to get rid of that stuff or change the rules.' We were going to play like the boys because that was a bunch of nonesense. And the girls liked that so much better."

Now, 45 years later, Glennallen High has a girls basketball national letter of intent signee - Jubilee Sutherland, a 5-foot-6 guard who averaged 22.4 points, 6.2 rebounds, 4.7 steals and 4.4 assissts this past season.

And where did she sign to play basketball?

Just down the road from Sailors, who now makes his home in Laramie, At Eastern Wyoming Community College in Torrington.

Photo in 2010 of Kenny with Jubilee Sutherland on the team at
Eastern Wyoming Community College in Torrington. 
Her mother, Jeannette Tegeler, once played for Kenny at
Glennallen High School in Alaska