Sports in Anchorage
The Sullivan Arena is home to the Alaska Aces of the ECHL (formerly East Coast Hockey League). The city’s only other professional franchise, the Alaska Wild, an arena football team, is scheduled to begin playing with the Intense Football League in April 2007.
The Anchorage Bucs Baseball Club is a summer collegiate baseball team, attracting players from universities throughout the world. The Anchorage Glacier Pilots are a member of the National Baseball Congress. Both baseball clubs play at Mulcahy Stadium.
The University of Alaska Anchorage sponsors the annual Great Alaska Shootout, an annual NCAA Division I basketball tournament featuring colleges and universities from across the United States. The University of Alaska Anchorage also has a Men’s Division I hockey team that plays within the WCHA (Western Collegiate Hockey Association).
Anchorage is the finish line for a wheelchair race known as Sadler’s Ultra Challenge. Divisions include Men’s Handcycle (with A, B, and C classes), Men’s Wheelchair, and Women’s Handcycle. The 267-mile-long race is run in eight stages and takes six days to complete. The annual competition began in 2001 and occurs in July of each year.