Constant competition: How the UAA women's basketball team stays hungry

To motivate his players each fall, when the UAA women's basketball team conducts a conditioning run of roughly 1.5 miles, coach Ryan McCarthy entices them with the prospect of a meal meatier than any carrot, even a metaphorical one.

How players fare against McCarthy in six laps around the track at Wendler Middle School determines their entree at the team's annual preseason barbecue.

"If anyone beats me, they get a steak,'' McCarthy said. "If they get beat by me, they get a hot dog.''

Think of it as the carrot (steak) or the stick (hot dog).

Senior Alysha Devine has sent McCarthy behind the grill to prepare her steak for four straight years, and sophomore Hannah Wandersee joined her in feasting on steak before the current season.

That competition is just one of many motivational ploys McCarthy uses, and they all center on the merits of winning — and staying hungry, as it were.

"That sets the tone,'' McCarthy said of the steak or hot dog challenge. "We reward the things we think help our culture.''

That culture covets winning, which the Seawolves do with remarkable regularity.

UAA is 29-1, ranked No. 2 in the nation and riding a school-record, 25-game winning streak as it prepares to host the NCAA Division II West Regional beginning Friday at the Alaska Airlines Arena.

The University of Alaska Anchorage Seawolves last season went 38-3 and ascended to the national championship game, where they fell to Lubbock Christian. In the last three seasons, they are an astounding 96-6 and have won back-to-back-to-back Great Northwest Athletic Conference championships.

Competition is constant in the Seawolves program. McCarthy particularly values it, given he directs a pressing, ball-hawking, tenacious team in which all 10 players average at least 10 minutes a game.

At any given practice, the Seawolves might have a 4-on-4 defensive competition in which a point is awarded for an offensive rebound. That teaches the value of boxing out.

Sometimes, the players are instructed to choose teams of three, but are not immediately told what the competition will entail. So, pick a team based on shooting ability? Size? Quickness?

McCarthy recalled such a moment from last season. Then-senior guard Jenna Buchanan kept picking fellow senior guard Jessica Madison. Teammates joked Buchanan kept drafting Madison because they were such good friends.

Buchanan, McCarthy remembered, countered that she kept picking Madison based on results of previous competitions that day: "She hasn't lost.''

Usually, the stakes aren't, well, steak.

"The winner has water,'' McCarthy said, "and the loser gets something else, or go gets the water.''

McCarthy believes constant competition keeps the Seawolves sharp and focused, which he deems pivotal for a team on which everyone plays meaningful minutes.

The Seawolves also conduct individual competitions when the structured part of practice is over. This season, for instance, they each vowed to make 100 extra free throws a week.

Wandersee, from Kodiak, said she immediately grasped the seriousness of daily competition, and daily standards, when she joined the program.

"The minute you got here, you were accountable — to be on time, to play your hardest,'' Wandersee said. "It was a wake-up call.''

Not that everything is dead-serious. Wandersee, for instance, floated into a press conference at the Alaska Airlines Center on Tuesday afternoon wearing socks, but not shoes. She and teammate Kiki Robertson beamed throughout the session.

Robertson, a fearless and relentless senior point guard, said constant competition has developed the Seawolves into a team that plays like it practices.

"The coaching staff is always pushing us, and we push each other,'' she said.

And McCarthy doesn't let them off easy. A former college basketball player who had a short pro career, McCarthy has undergone six surgeries on his left knee.

The damage doesn't allow him to play pick-up hoops these days — for aerobic exercise, he jumps rope between sets of lifting weights — but he hinted perhaps he prepares each fall prior to that 1.5-mile conditioning run against his players.

"There might be a couple weeks of training in there before the run,'' allowed a grinning McCarthy.

After all, the way McCarthy figures it, the prospect of losing to the coach keeps a player hungry.

NCAA Division II West Regional Women's Basketball Championship at Alaska Airlines Center, UAA campus

Friday's opening round, regional seeding in parentheses:

Noon — (6) Cal State East Bay (22-8) vs. (3) Western Washington (25-5)

2:30 p.m. — (7) Point Loma (24-5) vs. (2) Cal Baptist (31-2)

5 p.m. — (5) Simon Fraser (24-7) vs. (4) UC San Diego (23-6)

7:30 p.m. — (8) Hawaii Pacific (21-6) vs. (1) UAA (29-1)