AUGUST 18, 2015 THENORTHERNLIGHT.ORGUNIVERSITY OF ALASKA ANCHORAGE

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RED ZONE: Introducing the 2015 Red Zone series

As the trees slowly begin to fade to orange, the fight for parking starts anew and hall-ways at UAA begin to fill and buzz with conversation, some-thing goes unspoken.

Rape.What few will tell you

is that the beginning of the school year is a time plagued by sexual assault. More col-lege sexual assaults happen in the first weeks of fall semester leading up to Thanksgiving than the rest of the school year. This period of time has come to be known as the Red Zone.

While awareness of this high-risk period of time is low, even worse still is that less than 5 percent of victims will report to law enforcement, according to the Campus Sexual Assault Study report done in 2007.

The Northern Light is embarking on its second year of publishing a series, entitled the Red Zone, in attempts to decrease the stigma of sexual assault victims, raise aware-ness of this high-risk time period and bring safety to our campus.

To read all the stories from

this series, please visit http://thenorthernlight.org/category/red-zone/ or scan the QR Code below:

By Kelly Irelandeditor@thenorthernlight.org

SPORTS THENORTHERNLIGHTTUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2015 | 02

Seventy-eight days.That’s how long the Seawolves hock-

ey team had a coaching vacancy last spring after head coach Matt Thomas announced the departure of former assistant coach T.J. Jindra at the end of March.

However, Seawolves would eventu-ally find their man.

Thomas announced Louis Mass as his new assistant June 17.

“We were looking for an experienced individual that had a history of winning and developing players at a high level,” Thomas said in a June press release. “Coach Mass hit on all those points and the fact that he is an Anchorage native proved a no-brainer for us.”

Mass’s experience includes an impressive five-year run with Alaska Aces as an assistant coach. The Aces won two Kelly Cups — the trophy awarded every year to the ECHL cham-pion — in Mass’s first year as an assis-tant in 2011 before winning it again in

2014. While Mass acknowledged that his

old job offered upward mobility, espe-cially for successful coaches like him-self, it was not necessarily what he wanted.

“For me being an Alaskan — I real-ized not that long ago that I wanted to stay here. This is where I want to make my life,” Mass said. “I look at that career, and especially down the road if I have a family, it’s tough.”

The lifecycle of pro hockey coaches is typically short, and moving around a lot is not uncommon as an individual moves up the coaching ladder. In addi-tion to the ever-present reality of a move across the country, professional teams travel like — well, professional teams. The 2015-16 regular season for the Aces includes a month with nine away games with contests in South Dakota, Idaho and Colorado.

With the Seawolves, Mass will have to travel less, and the threat of a move is

not as imminent.“This allows me to be in a much

more stable environment — theoreti-cally,” Mass said.

And while Mass still has a lot to learn about his new team, he won’t be starting completely from scratch. Mass has helped train some of the Seawolves in the offseason at a training facility he operates during the summer.

Junior defenseman Chase Van Allen has worked out with Mass the past few summers and thinks it was a “terrific” pick-up by the team.

“His defensive knowledge of the game is going to help us tremendously,” Van Allen said.

Van Allen also likes what he’s heard about his coaching style. “He’s really personable, easy to talk to, very approachable if you want to know any-thing,” he said of Mass.

As for the Seawolves he has yet to meet, well, that’s part of what Mass loves about coaching.

“There are always new people you’re involved with and there are new chal-lenges,” Mass said. “It’s never static.”

The Seawolves start the season in Soldotna in an exhibition against Mt. Royal Oct. 2. The annual Green & Gold game will be played two days later in the newly renovated Wells Fargo Sports Complex.

UAA Hockey hires new assistant coach over summer

By Nolin Ainsworthsports@thenorthernlight.org

UAA’s assistant hockey coach, Louie Mass, takes questions from the audience during a public Q&A at the Varsity Sports Grill last month.

PHOTO BY ADAM EBERHARDT

Alaska Airlines Center nears 1-year anniversary

By Adam Eberhardtaeberhardt@thenorthernlight.org

The Alaska Airlines Center is approaching its first full calendar year of use. The $109 million, multi-purpose arena has seen several concerts, cultural activities and numerous UAA athletic events in the past year. In total, an estimated 200,000 people have attended an event at the arena since its opening last September.

The Alaska Airlines Center also helped draw in larger crowds to UAA athletic events. Where the gymnasium at the Wells Fargo Sports Complex could only hold 1,250 fans in its bleachers, the Alaska Airlines Center can seat up to 5,000. Both the men and women’s basketball teams saw a large increase in home attendance after the move to the Alaska Airlines Center. In fact, both the men and women hoopsters led their respective Great Northwest Athletic Conferences in home attendance — averag-ing around 1,100 attendees when at home.

UAA Women’s Basketball head coach Ryan McCarthy said that the Alaska Air-lines Center is “right there with the best of them” in terms of other athletic facilities around the world. Many other coaches and players agree with McCarthy and say it outpaces some NCAA Div. I facilities.

UAA Athletics Director Keith Hackett sees the Alaska Airlines Center not only as a useful asset for coaches to recruit players, but also as a way to bring the community together. The center hosted the Alaska School Activities Association 1A and 2A high school basketball tournaments in March. A month later, the center hosted the Native Youth Olympics. Both events drew competitors and spectators from all over the state.

Hackett said he wanted to “make sure everyone has an opportunity to enjoy the building.”

The Alaska Airlines Center also became the new host to one of Alaska’s signature sporting events, the Great Alaska Shootout. Shootout had been hosted at the Sullivan Arena since the inaugural tournament in 1983.

Even before the shootout was hosted by the Alaska Airlines Center, the new arena saw its first major musical act, Tim McGraw. The country singer from Louisiana per-formed two nights in late October to near-sold out crowds. The venue has hosted sev-eral other musical acts such as Brad Paisley, Mötley Crüe and the Alabama Shakes. The center will host another country singer, Toby Keith, this fall.

The Alaska Airlines Center also brought the UAA Athletic program more space. Track and field coach Eric Walsh noted that back when the Wells Fargo Sports Com-plex was home to the athletics teams, there were times when two or three teams would need to use the athletic training room before and after practice. The room itself, which is only about 12 feet by 26 feet, struggled to hold the number of athletes that required attention from the trainers. In the Alaska Airlines Center, there is now more than enough room in the athletics training area to help athletes that need treatment.

The Alaska Airlines Center has also been beneficial to university traditions like Fall and Spring Commencement ceremonies. Bridgett Dyson, University Advance-ment’s special events manager, said that the venue has allowed UAA to lower costs of commencement. The building has also allowed UAA to begin holding commence-ments in the fall and the spring.

The Alaska Airlines Center will host its first UAA athletic event of the season at 7 p.m. Aug. 29, when the UAA volleyball team holds its alumnae match.

PHOTO BY ADAM EBERHARDT

The arena saw a crowd of 2,518 people for the UAA/Point Loma game during the first round of the NCAA Div. II Western Regional Championships on March 13 at the Alaska Airlines Center.

SPORTS THENORTHERNLIGHTTUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2015 | 03

Feb. 20-21 – FIRST Tech Robotics Challenge

March 13-16 – NCAA Division II West Region Women’s Basketball tournament

April 9-11 – Harlem Globetrotters exhibition games

April 25-26 – Brad Paisley concert

May 3 – UAA commencement ceremony

July 17 – Mötley Crüe concert

Timeline of the Alaska Airlines Center’s first year

Aug. 12 – UAA Volleyball’s first practice

Sept. 5 – Grand Opening, UAA Volleyball season opener (St. Leo)

Sept. 13 – Alabama Shakes concert

Oct. 28-29 – Tim McGraw concert

Nov. 7 – UAA Men’s Basketball home opener (Concordia)

Nov. 12-14 – ASAA 3A/4A high school volleyball state championships

Nov. 20 – UAA Women’s Basketball AAC opener (Christian Brothers)

Nov. 25-29 – Great Alaska Shootout

20152014

MAP BY JENNA! ROOSDETT AND JIAN BAUTISTA

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As fall semester looms just around thwe corner, so does the reopening of the Wells Fargo Sports Complex. The recreation center is in the later stages of several major renovations and upgrades that have kept the building closed all summer. The upper level of the sports complex is scheduled to open by the first day of classes, Aug. 24. The lower level will remain under construction through Sept. 14.

Changes will be readily apparent to returning students. The vacated UAA Athletics offices on the second floor have transformed into a student fitness center and yoga studio. Large glass panels on either side of the fitness center offer gym users and passing students a view outside and more natural light. The fitness center will also have increased hours for students to use.

“For those of us who remember what it was like, they are going to be impressed,” said Recre-ational Department assistant director of programs Alan Piccard.

On the other end of the building, newly reno-vated offices for the Recreational Department will also be showcased with glass panels on one side.

Renovations to the downstairs will include an all-new hockey locker room and players’ lounge. Across the hall, the ice rink will be receiving an all new ice plant and set of dasher boards and glass. The ice plant will be placed in a protective structure on the exterior of the WFSC behind the Student Union as soon as it arrives to Anchorage. The rink will also have new LED lights that won’t produce as much heat as the old rink lighting. A

heavy-lifting room open to all will replace the space the old hockey locker room once occupied.

As one might expect when remodeling a struc-ture from the 1970s, some spaces posed rather complex design challenges. Kristin Reynolds, the lead project manager on the job, is proud of how the design team and contractors worked around these difficulties.

“It’s much more complex in the construction phase to do a remodel like this than it is to build a new building, when you can just say how big you want it,” Reynolds said. “It’s a little bit more engaging and it’s more challenging.”

One such challenge was the installation of a new air handler unit — a bulky piece of hardware that serves as the origin and terminal of all air ventilation in the building. The unit needed to be moved into the penthouse, an upper chamber of the WFSC between the gym and ice rink. Because the area didn’t offer a convenient entry point for it, the air-handler’s eight units had to be broken into four to six pieces each before being hoisted up from the gym floor and through a small square opening in the wall near the ceiling. Once the air handler pieces were in the penthouse, they could be reassembled. The new air handler unit is rough-ly twice the size of the old one.

Despite the lower level remaining closed through Sept. 14, the project’s timing couldn’t have worked out much better for students said Pic-card.

“The timing was done I mean about as perfect-ly as it could,” he added.

Sports complex lower level to remain closed through Sept. 14By Nolin Ainsworthsports@thenorthernlight.org

Construction workers carefully guide an air handler part as it’s hoisted up to the penthouse, where it will be reassembled with other parts.

PHOTO BY KRISTIN REYNOLDS

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