(Contributed by Gunnison Country Times Sports Editor Alex McCrindle)

Long before Rachel Cockman led the Mountaineers women's basketball team to the RMAC semifinals, she was racing across the remote Alaskan wilderness in dogsledding competitions. Growing up in the remote town of Cantwell, Alaska, she first fell in love with the freedom and independence of mushing. A career in basketball couldn't have been further from her mind, and geographically, her future high school court was over an hour away.

But despite all odds, Cockman found her way to Western Colorado University, and last spring, placed first in one of the top professional scouting camps in the nation. Now, the former Mountaineer captain faces an entirely new challenge — she will move to Aveiro, Portugal to play professionally for Clube dos Galitos in the first division of Portuguese women's basketball.

Cockman grew up in the 200-person town of Cantwell, burrowed in the eastern foothills of Denali National Park. Her middle school basketball team fielded a co-ed team of six kids, and Cockman preferred racing through the snow behind her dog team to competing on the hardwood.

"When I first started playing [basketball], I absolutely hated it," Cockman said. "I was terrible, like I was so, so bad."

Instead of being cooped up inside gymnasiums during the long Alaskan winters, she embraced the cold from the back of her dogsled. Cockman competed in the Junior Iditarod, and the Willow 100 dogsled races, travelling over 150 miles across the Alaskan wildlands alone, all before high school.

In the fall of 2017, Cockman transferred to a school an hour outside of Cantwell. Coincidentally, she also hit a massive growth spurt, and suddenly, the idea of dominating on a basketball court started to become more attractive. She credits her childhood coach, Vanessa Juszcak, with "uplifting and empowering" her, in those early years. For the first time, she started to fall in love with the game.

"I have so much gratitude for being raised in Cantwell, and riding in my mom's sled before I could walk," she said. "Dogsledding taught me a lot about perseverance and hard work. Being out alone in the Alaskan wilderness can be dangerous, and I learned a lot about independence, spending hours alone with my dogs under the stars."

When Cockman started the search for a collegiate program, she discovered the one Lower 48 town similar to the climate and remoteness of Cantwell. But it took some convincing to sign for Western. Before visiting the Gunnison Valley, she was days away from committing to a Division 3 program in Washington. But the persistence of Western's coaching staff paid off, and after a single visit, Cockman committed to play for the Crimson and Slate.

"Gunnison really felt like home," Cockman said. "I wanted to go somewhere where I could be a part of a family — something bigger than basketball — and that's what I felt with the Western basketball team and with the university as a whole."

By her sophomore year in Gunnison, Cockman had already secured a starting role, and earned an RMAC honorable mention. Inspired by the leadership of 2021-22 captain Katie Dalton, Cockman stepped into a captain's role her junior year and led the Mountaineers with 7.3 rebounds per game and 20 blocks that season. Despite Cockman's dominance at the power forward position, Western still fell to a 7-20 overall record, and failed to qualify for the RMAC tournament.

Last season, Cockman finished her collegiate career with a Cinderella-story run into the conference tournament. The Mountaineers galloped through the regular season with a 20-7 record, and Cockman's leadership was at the center. En route to a first-team all conference award, the Western captain surpassed the 1,000 point mark against Colorado Mesa University, and scored 20 or more points in 10 games. The Mountaineers defeated Regis University in the opening round of the RMAC tournament, but fell in the semifinals to the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.

Still, Cockman's all-star year continued into the offseason. After graduating, she placed first out of nearly 100 players at the 2025 Eurobasket Summer League Showcase in Tampa, Florida — one of the nation's largest scouting camps for prospective professionals. Her performance earned her offers from clubs in Spain and Malta, and she signed with Clube dos Galitos in Aveiro, Portugal this summer.

The former Mountaineer captain will pack up in Gunnison on Aug. 29, and trade the high mountains for the coastal village of Aveiro, known as the "Venice of Portugal," for its canal system and colorful boats, called "Moliceiros." She will start practice the day after arriving, and enter a rigorous club evaluation process. If all goes according to plan, Cockman will compete in the Liga Feminina de Basquetebol — the first division of professional basketball in the country.

"I'm so excited to live in a new culture and experience something new," she said. "I want to go in with the mindset of immersing myself in the language and the culture, and take it all in. I'm in such an overwhelming state of gratitude, and feel so lucky to have been part of the journey, and a small part of Western's basketball history."

(Alex McCrindle can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or alex@gunnisontimes.com.)