Paced by stingy freshman goalkeeper Jared Wilson of Anchorage, the Peninsula College men's soccer team on Sunday won the championship of the Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges.

After a scoreless regulation and overtimes -- 110 minutes without a goal -- Peninsula won 5-4 over Highline on penalty kicks in Tukwila, Wash., when Wilson, the tournament MVP, stopped Highline's fifth shooter.

Keiahnna Engel, the reigning Player of the Year, will take her game to Division I Boise State next season.

Engel, a 5-foot-7 all-state guard for Dimond, averaged 21 points, 9 rebounds, 4 assists and 4 steals last season as a junior.

Another top player, Colony's Kaitlyn Klapperich, will sign a national letter of intent with Regis College, a Division II school in Denver. Klapperich is a 5-10 second-team all-stater who last season averaged 11 points, 3 steals and 3 assists while hitting 40 percent of her shots. She's getting an athletic and academic scholarship, according to her coaches.

Four UAA runners and 10 UAF runners were among the 79 athletes – 33 men and 46 women - named to the Great Northwest Athletic Conference cross country all-academic team Thursday.

All four of the UAA picks were Kenyans:

Senior Marko Cheseto, sophomore Micah Chelimo, junior Ruth Keino and
sophomore Miriam Kipng’eno.

Cheseto and Chelimo finished 1-2 in the men's race at last week's GNAC championships and Kipng'eno and Keino finished 2-3 in the women's race.

A handful or so of Alaska women, all from the Anchorage area, hit the big-time this week when the NCAA Division I Women's Soccer Championship kicks off at campus sites across the nation.

Among the 64 teams that qualified, we perused rosters and found several local women.

Alev Kelter, the Wisconsin women's soccer sophomore midfielder from Eagle River -- well, midfielder when it's futbol season, but a hockey player for the Badgers during the winter -- scored the game-winning, double-overtime goal Sunday in a 1-0 victory over Michigan.

In completely non-shocking news, ultramarathoner Geoff Roes of Juneau won a 50-mile trail race over the weekend.

It's what he does.

Roes, 34, who may be best known in these parts as the dude who in each of the last two summers lowered the record in the 24-miles-or-so Crow Pass Crossing from near Girdwood to the Eagle River Nature Center, easily captured the North Face Endurance Challenge in Georgia.

He clocked 7 hours, 42 minutes, 49 seconds and bagged $1,000 in prize money.

The Alaska Coaches Association released its large-schools and small-schools all-state football teams after the high school season ended over the weekend, and there were considerable differences in the sizes of those squads.

Cut to the chase: The small-schools coaches got it right, the large-schools coaches continued in their tradition of bloating the team in everyone's-a-winner fashion.

The Special Olympics got a nice assist from the Alaska 10-K Classic on Wednesday.

Race organizers and representatives from presenting sponsors Arctic Slope Regional Corporation and Alaska Serigraphics presented a check for $9,000 to Special Olympics.

The money was raised during this summer's 25th running of the footrace, which has been a fundraiser for Special Olympics since 1994.

Before we bring you the latest on Trajan Langdon's mini-tour of the NBA, we want to note a fact that can't be refudiated:

Langdon is the rare Alaskan who really can see Russia from his house.

He lives there.

Now, back to basketball and news about Langdon, the former East High star who was the first Alaskan to play in the NBA.

A superstar for CSKA Moscow of the Euroleague, Langdon put a scare into the Miami Heat earlier this week, scoring 20 points in a 96-85 loss in Miami.

The annual All-Cook Inlet Conference tackle football teams have been announced, and you can check them out in Wednesday's dead-trees of the ADN, provided you have time to devote to something that reads like the phone book.

Hey, everyone's a winner! OK, not everyone, but way too many guys. Gee, and people talk all the time these days about folks who feel entitled -- hmm, wonder what contributes to that?

This baseball factoid comes to us from Dick Lobdell of the Anchorage Glacier Pilots. He tells us that 8 former Alaska Baseball League players are playing in this week's MLB playoffs. Among them: Texas pitcher C.J. Wilson, who played for the Anchorage Bucs in 2000 and beat the Rays on Thursday.

The complete list:

Conrad, Brooks . . . Atlanta Braves, infielder (Goldpanners in 1999 and 2000)

Dobbs, Greg . . . Philadelphia Phillies, infielder (Glacier Pilots in 2000)

Francisco, Ben . . . Philadelphia Phillies, outfielder (Glacier Pilots in 2001)

Alaskans love going to movies about Alaska and finding all the mistakes of geography, history, flora, fauna, etcetera.

"Everybody Loves Whales" will presumably avoid many of those mistakes because it's being filmed right here in the Great Land.

But something in ADN reporter Kyle Hopkins' weekend story about the movie caught our eye. It mentioned that filmmakers transformed a portion of West High into a facsimile of the Barrow school, a display of movie magic that included the erection of a banner that read:

"Greatland Conference Champions 1987-88: Basketball."

If you don't mind looking for your golf ball in the piles of yellow leaves resting on most of the fairways these days, some good golf weather is still available on Anchorage courses.
Anchorage golf courses usually stay open until weather prohibits play, but Moose Run's Creek Course is doing so for the first time. Moose Run usually closes The Creek Course weeks before the first snow fall for maintenance purposes.

Early last month -- before he broke a toe while answering the door -- Carlos Boozer took on a teenager in a game of HORSE as part of a charity event involving two Chicago high schools.

Boozer, the former Juneau-Douglas star, is one of the NBA's best big men. So did he school the high schooler with the monstrous jams that are part of his regular repertoire?

Check out the video below to find out.

Kimmy Jackson of Dimond and Anna Woern of East were named the players of the year for Cook Inlet Conference flag football Wednesday.

Jackson, a senior running back who was named the offensive player of the year, picked up the slack when star Keiahnna Engel went down with an injury and missed several games. Engel's back now, and together she and Jackson give Dimond a lethal offensive duo.

Woern, a junior, was named the defensive player of the year for her role in helping East earn a share of the regular-season CIC title with Dimond.

Roger Franklin spends his time counseling students in the Northwest Arctic School District. He is based in Ambler, hundreds of miles away from the nearest track oval.

This weekend, he'll be inducted into the sports Hall of Fame at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, where Franklin was a world-class sprinter in the late 80s. He joined the team as a walk-on and left it as a highly decorated NAIA All-American.

Friday proved a pretty sweet night for the Sharps.

First, Rexanne Sharp performed a nice version of the national athem before the West High-West Valley state large-schools quarterfinal football game at Anchorage Football Stadium.

Next, her younger brother, Eagles senior Will Sharp shined in his No. 1-ranked team's 20-12 win.

Sharp caught four passes for 79 yards and one touchdown. He also made a crucial 32-yard run on a fake punt, which set up the insurance touchdown the Eagles (9-0) needed for some breathing room.

My bad for forgetting about checking into this last weekend -- somehow, I thought the Berlin Marathon was in October -- but in any event local standout Jerry Ross ran well in Germany.

Ross, a former Mayor's Marathon champ -- he won in 2007 and 2008 -- former UAA runner and former Dimond High runner, clocked 2 hours, 29 minutes, 14 seconds to finish 46th overall.

Ross finished fifth among Americans.

If you want to see your favorite athlete or coach – or even your favorite U.S. Senator – honored by the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame, you have until Wednesday to cast a vote.

Votes for Alaska’s top athletes, events and sports moments can be cast at alaskasportshall.org. There, you’ll find an exhaustive list of nominees – and if your favorite isn’t listed, there’s a place for write-in votes.

Speaking of write-in votes, a certain senator is getting more than a few. And no, we don’t mean Lisa.

Wanna date a Rollergirl?

You have about two weeks decide. The Rage City Rollergirls roller derby league is holding its third annual “Black Eye and Tie” auction, where you can bid for dates with either a rollergirl or a referee.

Date packages go on auction at 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 16, at the UAA Student Union. If you don’t want a date, there will be silent-auction gift packages to bid on too.