VOZNESENKA, Alaska — The football players wore their black and yellow jerseys to class last Friday, a day before the home opener for Voznesenka School, the smallest high school in Alaska to field a team.
But a game required at least 11 players. And so far at practice this summer, the Cougars had fielded no more than 10.
The roster is customarily thin at the beginning of the season in this lush and remote community where sports for boys and girls have progressed carefully, with an evolving balance of contemporary life and the old ways of tradition and religion.
Players were still trickling into school after a summer on commercial fishing boats, drift-netting for salmon with their fathers, brothers, uncles and cousins. For some it had been a record haul for sockeye, a variety of wild salmon known here as reds, and a number of players had been on the water for two months.
Practice began in late July, but it was haphazard. Five players showed up one day, six or seven the next. It went on that way, week after week.
Each absence was acutely felt at a school of 109 students, in prekindergarten through 12th grade, with only 29 in high school. The first game, scheduled on the road for Aug. 17, was canceled. It was Voznesenka’s first forfeit in the five seasons it has played 11-man football, after brief participation in the unofficial, eight-man version.
“Heartbreaking,” said Justin Zank, 34, Voznesenka’s football and wrestling coach.
He laughed grimly.
“I think this season has taken years off my life.”
And it had yet to begin.
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