The Class of 2024 Alaska Sports Hall of Fame inductees and Directors’ Awards winners will be honored at 7pm, Tuesday, April 30th at the Anchorage Museum atrium. There is a VIP reception from 6-7pm prior to the ceremony.
The ceremony is free and open to the public. Standing room is available if seating capacity is filled.
Allie Ostrander, Dallas Seavey and Bobby Hill will be enshrined into the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame. They are joined in the Class of 2024 by the moment Scott Gomez was named NHL Rookie of the Year in 2000. There is a least one Moment category induction each year.
The Directors’ Awards recognize Alaska’s top athletes of the past year.
Thirteen-time NCAA All-American runner Allie Ostrander, five-time Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race champion Dallas Seavey and ten-time Special Olympics World Games medalist Bobby Hill were selected to the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame as the Class of 2024.
“We are inducting three contemporary athletes who are still building their resumes, but our selection panel decided it was the right time,” said Alaska Sports Hall of Fame executive director Harlow Robinson.
“Each of them has achieved greatness within their respective sports at this point in their careers and each of them have brought so much pride to Alaskans over the years.”
The Class of 2024 will be the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame’s 16th inducted class.
Allie Ostrander
Ostrander, a running marvel from the Kenai Peninsula, captured three NCAA Division I steeplechase championships and has a storied career at Mount Marathon.
At Boise State, she was a 13-time All-American in track and cross country — she was the national runnerup at the 2015 cross country championships— before turning pro after her junior year.
At Mount Marathon, she won the 2017 women’s race with the second-fastest time in history and was a six-time junior girls champion, making her sixth victory an overall victory by beating all of the boys.
Dallas Seavey
No one has a better record of success in the Iditarod than Seavey, whose record-tying fifth victory came in his 13th.
His 2021 triumph tied the long-held record held by Rick Swenson, who posted his fifth win in his 16th race.
Seavey, part of a three-generation Iditarod family from Seward, became the race’s youngest musher at age 18 in 2005.
He became its fastest in 2021 with a blazing run of 7 days, 14 hours, 57 seconds.
Bobby Hill
A Special Olympics competitor for more than 30 years, Hill has captured 10 powerlifting medals in three appearances in the World Summer Games.
He won one gold and three silvers at the 2023 Berlin Games, grabbed four silver medals at the 2007 Shanghai Games and won two golds at the 2003 Dublin Games.
Hill, who was born with Down syndrome, has collected more than 200 medals at the statewide games in powerlifting, floor hockey, golf and bocce.
In 2018, he was honored by the Alaska Legislature for 20 years of dedication as the Bartlett High football team manager.
Moment: Scott Gomez Named NHL Rookie of the Year in 2000
For Gomez, this will be his third induction into the Hall of Fame after previously being selected as an individual and the moment he brought the Stanley Cup back to Anchorage.
In 2000, a 20-year-old Gomez set the NHL on fire with the New Jersey Devils in 2000, winning the Stanley Cup, making the All-Star team and winning the Calder Memorial Trophy as the league’s rookie of the year.
The Anchorage center led all rookies in scoring with 19 goals and 51 assists for 70 points in 82 regular-season games and during the playoffs he registered 10 points, tying for top honors among rookies.
The board of directors decided to take a pause on inducting the event category.
The Directors Award winners are:
Emily Robinson, Pride of Alaska girls winner. The teenage musher from Nenana ran with the big dogs and beat them, winning her first mid-distance race by topping a Knik 200 field that included two recent Iditarod champions. Robinson followed up by capturing her third straight Junior Iditarod crown, becoming the first musher since 1984 to three-peat.
PJ Foy, Pride of Alaska boys winner. He swam to five gold medals at the Western Zone regional meet last summer and then capped his high school career at Thunder Mountain High School in Juneau by breaking his own records in two events at the state championships. More recently, he became the 13th Alaskan in history to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Trials.
Alissa Pili, Pride of Alaska women’s winner. In a year when women’s basketball captivated the country, Pili had a starring role. She was named to four All-America teams and set a single-season school scoring record with 727 points while leading Utah to a 23-11 record and the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Her season included a trip home for the Great Alaska Shootout, where she drew adoring crowds.
Gus Schumacher, Pride of Alaska men’s winner. The 23-year-old rocked the cross-country ski world by becoming the first American man to win a World Cup distance race since 1983. Schumacher’s stellar season also included a victory in the American Birkebeiner, two top-10 finishes in the Tour de Ski and the No. 15 ranking in the overall World Cup standings.
Doug Keil, Joe Floyd Award. Keil, who became Alaska’s first Paralympian in 1980, introduced the world of adaptive sports to thousands of Alaskans with disabilities. He founded Challenge Alaska more than 40 years ago, and though the early emphasis was on skiing, the nonprofit organization now provides access to dozens of sports and outdoors activities. It also teams up with the Anchorage School District to bring wheelchair sports to schools.
Tyson Gilbert, Trajan Langdon Award adult winner. Open-heart surgery cost him one season and a torn Achilles tendon cost him another, but Gilbert battled back to lead the UAA men’s basketball team in scoring for two straight seasons. This season he averaged 15.3 points a game to earn first-team all-conference honors and lead the Seawolves to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 12 years.
The Petersburg boys basketball team, Trajan Langdon Award youth winners. A Cinderella run through the postseason carried the Vikings to the Class 2A state championship, a fitting reward for a team that embraced the concept of teamwork, made contributions to its community and showed compassion for a sick classmate.
The section panel is comprised of Beth Bragg (panel chair), former sports editor, Anchorage Daily News; Bruce Cech, Fairbanks sports broadcaster and journalist; Lew Freedman, former Anchorage Daily News sports editor and author of numerous books about Alaska sports; Mike Janecek, longtime Mat-Su Valley high school coach and athletics administrator; Danny Martin, sports editor, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner; Kathleen Navarre, Kodiak and Dimond High School coach and administrator; Keith Perkins, Sitka-based high school sports official and broadcaster; Klas Stolpe, former Juneau Empire sports editor; and Doyle Woody, former sports writer and editor at the Anchorage Daily News.
The tenth ballot was submitted by the cumulative vote of the public. All four of the candidates selected for induction ranked very high in the public vote.
Upon enshrinement, inductee portraits are permanently displayed at the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame Gallery at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. Each inductee is recognized on this website, featuring a written biography, video profile and photo gallery.
For full list of Alaska Sports Hall of Fame Inductees, click here.