We do things differently up here, Alaskans are proud to say, and boy, are we right.

Only in Alaska will you find a high school football league quite like the Great Land Conference, a five-team league that ranges geographically from Houston, 55 miles north of Anchorage, to Seward, 125 miles south of Anchorage, to Sitka, 592 air miles southeast of Anchorage.

This is a league where one team, the Houston Hawks, doesn't have a homecoming game on the schedule because it doesn't play any games at home once school begins.

This is a league where one team, the first-year Sitka Wolves, hops a jet anytime it plays a road game. The Wolves are in the midst of their only road trip of the season, a trip that included Saturday's victory over Seward and this Saturday's game against Nikiski. They'll be away from home for nine days, a span during which they are bunking down on school floors.

This is a league where one team, the Glennallen Panthers, is taking the year off because it lost six seniors from last year's 18-man roster and doesn't have enough bodies to replace them.

This is a league where one team, the Nikiski Bulldogs, has a player who starts offensively as a quarterback and defensively as a middle linebacker.

This is a league where one team, the Seward Seahawks, was missing a player for the season opener because a snowboarding camp prevented him from attending the required number of practices.

This is a league where, when players talk about taking down moose, they don't mean the Palmer Moose. They mean real moose.

"Hunting season starts next week, and I've already had two players talk to me and say, 'Coach, I'm going to miss a game,' " Houston coach Mat Bredberg said. "It's not really a choice for them. For some people, hunting is a fun thing to do, but out here ... it's a subsistence thing."

The Seward Seahawks and Nikiski Bulldogs, both located on the Kenai Peninsula, often have late arrivals because of fishing jobs that extend beyond the start of football season.

Of the league's five teams, only Anchorage Christian seems immune from these only-in-Alaska oddities.

"It's hard for people who come up from Outside to understand this," Bredberg said. "They say, 'You had to do what instead of go to practice?' Hey, welcome to Alaska."

The Great Land enters its second weekend of play this weekend with Houston hosting West Valley, ACS on the road against the Kenai junior varsity team, Sitka at Nikiski and Seward at Skyview. All games except the Sitka-Nikiski game are nonconference.

The lone league game should be an interesting one. Nikiski is the defending Great Land champion and looked strong in a 28-7 win over Houston last weekend, while Sitka made an impressive debut with a 39-7 win over Seward.

In Seward, however, the Wolves faced a team that suited up just 16 players. The Seahawks return just five lettermen following the loss of 11 seniors who accounted for eight to nine starting positions on both sides of the ball last year.

In Nikiski, the Wolves face the three-time defending league champs whose roster bulges with 64 players and boasts numerous returning starters.

"We were surprised by Sitka," Seward coach Dan Bohrnsen said. "We didn't expect Sitka to be as sharp as they were. But they've been playing club football down there for 10 years, and we underestimated their ability."

A better indication of Sitka's strength may come this weekend against Nikiski, Bohrnsen said.

Nikiski returns nine juniors who were either varsity starters or backups as sophomores. The Bulldogs have a balanced running attack that features several backs, including junior Steven Calderwood, who rushed for 127 yards on 15 carries against Houston.

"We're so balanced this year I could just go on and on about all the kids," coach Scott Anderson said. "We don't have any superstars, just a bunch of solid players."

Perhaps the key player is Josh Reilly, who starts at both quarterback and middle linebacker.

"What a combination," Anderson said. "He's such a great athlete, a tenacious hitter and such a hard worker we can't afford not to have him on the field. When he's not there, you notice a letdown."

Seward, which lost to Nikiski in last year's championship game, appears to have gone from a peak to a valley. It has just two senior returners, Corbin Stirling (offensive guard/linebacker) and Devin Loomis (receiver/defensive end).

Darian Draper (running back/linebacker) has looked strong in practice, Bohrnsen said, but didn't play last weekend because he started practice late due to a snowboarding camp. And Zack Rininger (running back/linebacker) was Seward's best player last weekend -- until he broke a finger in the third quarter.

"Right now we're a skeleton crew," Bohrnsen said. "We're real battle-scarred and torn right now. We're trying to find out who our leaders are, and we're rebuilding. Last week we looked like a JV team and we played like one."

Houston has 30 players out, including Jeff Nagel, a fifth-year senior who was all-conference last year as both a running back and kick returner, and Jacob Chapel, a 320-pound senior lineman who transferred to the school late last season and claimed the Class 1-2-3A heavyweight wrestling title.

Unfortunately for the Hawks, they will play both of their home games -- and four of their scheduled seven games -- before students return to school the Tuesday after Labor Day.

Houston originally had eight games scheduled, but its Sept. 23 game against Glennallen was canceled when Glennallen decided to sit out the season.

That game happened to be Houston's homecoming game. Unless the Hawks can find a last-minute replacement, they won't have much of a homecoming, because their last home game is this weekend. And with the start of school 21/2 weeks away, there's no one at school to plan a parade and a dance, and to select a homecoming king and queen.

Compared to its opponents, Anchorage Christian is an oasis of normality -- although kicker Jamie Montgomery has a hard time practicing field goals and PATs because the school's field doesn't have goal posts.

The Lions are playing football for the first time in almost two decades. That means they have numerous players who had never played organized football, but they do have some true athletes to rely on -- quarterback Richard Stafford, running backs Adam Lewis and Daniel McCarty and linebacker James McCarty.

And in assistant coach John Hostetter, they have the man who was the offensive coordinator during Service High's three-year run as state champs.