Sean Rash, Dick Griffith, Butch Lincoln headline Alaska Sports Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026
- Alaska Sports Report
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
By Alaska Sports Report staff
The Last Frontier’s all-time best bowler, the grandfather of modern Alaska adventure and a Bush basketball star are headed to the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame.
Sean Rash, Dick Griffith and Butch Lincoln will highlight the Class of 2026 inductions that will also include two moments:
• 16-year-old Ephriam Kalmakoff sets Mount Marathon record in 1928
• The East/Bartlett triple-overtime boys basketball state title game in 1993
• The induction ceremony will be held in late spring at the Anchorage Museum. Upon enshrinement, inductee portraits will be displayed at the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame Gallery at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.
“I’m pleased to say that our 18th class of inductees is as impressive as the inaugural class,” said Alaska Sports Hall of Fame executive director Harlow Robinson.
“Alaska has the most diverse sports heritage of any state in the union and the Class of 2026 reflects this.”
Rash, 43, is the winner of 18 Professional Bowling Association titles and the 2011-12 PBA Player of the Year.
The Anchorage man has rolled 30 perfect games of 300 and has pocketed over $1.5 million in career earnings since going pro in 2005 after a successful college career at Wichita State.
He has been inducted into the USBC and PBA Hall of Fame.
Three months ago, Rash overcame a right-hand injury to roll a 221 and beat Finland’s Juho Rissanen in the title match of the Storm Lucky Larsen Masters in Sweden, catapulting the Dimond High School graduate into the PBA Tour’s top 20 all-time wins list.
Griffith was a pioneer of Alaska adventure racing whose lifetime pursuit of trekking and rafting spanned thousands of miles and several decades.
It was only a week ago that Griffith died in his sleep at age 98.
Throughout his 50s, 60s and 70s, he continued to complete the annual Wilderness Classic races all across Alaska and row rafts down the Grand Canyon. He did his last Classic at 81. He rowed his last Grand Canyon trip at 89.
Longtime local runner Roman Dial described Griffith as “Clint Eastwood in tennis shoes and a backpack.”
Griffith was a 17-time finisher of the arduous Alaska Wilderness Classic, and in the 1982 race he introduced packrafting, which has since become mainstream.
Griffith, of Anchorage, trekked some 10,000 miles in Alaska, Canada and beyond, and recorded floating firsts in the Grand Canyon and other notable canyons.
Lincoln broke down social and racial barriers with the same easiness that he used to break down an opponent’s press defense on the basketball court. More than just an all-star player in high school and college, he was a trailblazer for Alaska Natives and a role model for all players because of his courtliness and court sense.
Lincoln starred at UAA between 1993 and 1997, helping the Seawolves win 69 games, capture three Pac West Conference titles and secure three berths to the NCAA Tournament. Lincoln’s 325 career assists rank seventh all-time and his 85.4 percent free throw shooting ranks sixth all-time.
The 5-foot-7 point guard was a passing wiz and deft dribbler who was effective against aggressive defenses aimed at slowing him down. In 1996, he famously zigged and zagged around Kentucky’s famed press to the delight of the crowd at the Great Alaska Shootout.
In 1990, he led the Huskies to the Class 3A state championship game – the team’s only finals appearance before or since. In 1991, he averaged 23 points per game on a 25-win team.
In 1999, Lincoln was honored by Sports Illustrated as one of Alaska’s 50 greatest sports figures of the 20th century.
So small that he slipped under the rope at the finish line rather than running through it, Ephriam Kalmakoff was a teenager who wore his Boy Scout uniform while setting a long-lasting record nearly a hundred years ago in Seward’s Mount Marathon.
Kalmakoff was between 14 and 16 years old – records are sketchy – when he claimed victory in the 1928 mountain race. He finished in 52 minutes, 35 seconds, to lop more than 2.5 minutes off the previous record.
An Aleut from Chignik, Kalmakoff repeated as champion in 1929 and 1930 to become the race’s first three-time champion. His record stood for 29 years, until Olympic skier Sven Johanson ran 51:40 in 1957.
Kalmakoff lived at the Jesse Lee Home, the Seward boarding school for displaced children. The race was popular with the Home’s children, and in 1927 Kalmakoff was tuning up with swift practice runs that made him a pre-race favorite.
The Fourth of July was on a Tuesday that year, but at the last minute weekend visitors convinced the town to move the race to Sunday so more people could enjoy it. Kalmakoff, a strict Methodist, withdrew from the race rather than compete on the Sabbath. “I’ll try next year,” he said.
The next year, his practice runs again impressed onlookers. Come race day, no one could keep up with him. He came off the mountain with no one in immediate pursuit and was escorted to the finish line by children on bicycles. His winning time more than eclipsed the 1916 record of 55:12 set by Alec Bolan.
Kalmakoff won the 1929 race in 55:13 and the 1930 race in 54:00. Soon after that, he began to show symptoms of tuberculosis; he died from the disease in 1935.
In 1993, the East and Bartlett high school boys basketball teams played a state title game for the ages.
Mark Schweigert buried a jumper with 6 seconds left in triple overtime to give the nationally ranked T-birds a 92-90 Class 4A state championship win over rival Bartlett in front of 3,200 fans at West High.
Each overtime period ended with either a game-tying shot or free throw, and that’s not including Trajan Langdon’s baseline jumper with 28 seconds left in regulation that tied the game at 79.
In the first OT, Cartlett’s Cager Ector canned a jumper with 1 second left that tied it 85-85.
In the second OT, East’s Trajan Langdon nailed one of two free throws with 36 seconds left to tie it at 88.
After 50 minutes of play, it finally ended with Schweigert taking a feed from Langdon and sinking a 15-footer from the right side of the hoop.
The game was so great that even the losing team was impressed.
“It was the greatest game I’ve ever been a part of,” Bartlett’s Deshawn Irwin told the Anchorage Daily News. “It was the greatest I’ve ever seen, even on TV. I’ll never forget it.”
Longtime journalist Lew Freedman, who has covered high school basketball in and out of Alaska for over half a century stated the East-Bartlett epic was the greatest high school game he’s ever witnessed.
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; Kathleen Navarre, longtime High School coach and administrator in Kodiak and Anchorage; Keith Perkins, Sitka-based high school sports official and broadcaster; Jordan Rodenberger, Alaska’s News Source sports director; Klas Stolpe, former Juneau Empire sports editor; and Doyle Woody, former sports writer and editor at the Anchorage Daily News.
Each selection panel member completes a ballot and the cumulative vote from the public and from the living inductees is aggregated into one ballot each.
Each inductee is recognized on the ASHOF website featuring a written biography, video profile and photo gallery.
For full list of Alaska Sports Hall of Fame Inductees, click here.
• This story originally appeared at the Alaska Sports Report.
