According to Alaska Newspapers, Inc. (via The Arctic Sounder), Alaska's Native Youth Olympics (NYO) is turning 40 years old. The competition (more fun than cutthroat, really) began in 1971 as a way to lessen alienation felt by rural students who found themselves in city boarding schools, cut off from traditional culture, by bringing traditional Native sports to them. The first NYO, which is open to kids of any ethnic origin who have good academic standing, hosted about 100 competitors and only took an afternoon to complete, but now it attracts about 600 young people and takes three days. Though Alaska's rural public education system today looks radically different from how it looked during NYO's first few years, many rural students still find themselves displaced to cities, and NYO still helps them and their urban cohorts learn important lessons. The current coordinator of NYO, Brian Walker of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council, said participating in NYO gave his son the courage and confidence to tackle getting an A in Calculus. In Calculus, for crying out loud! Read much more about the history and impact of this Alaska tradition, here. And, read an awesome profile of a few NYO icons and the spirit of competition, also from ANI and the Sounder, here.