Idaho state girls basketball tournaments about ready to start

PREPS

Greg Lee is either down south or on his way, ready to cover the week of Idaho state girls basketball tournaments.

He kicks off the coverage today with an advance of the 1A tournament, which has two local representatives, Wallace and Kootenai and begins Wednesday. The other tourneys start Thursday.

There was some boys action Monday night in Idaho, and it can found in this roundup.

• Wednesday, Spokane will host one of the better events the community puts on, the 29th annual Spokane Regional Sports Commission Youth Awards Luncheon. The luncheon, which honors the top accomplishments of the athletes in our area, starts at noon.

In today’s S-R we ran a story documenting the Inland Northwest Sportswriters and Broadcasters’ 2006 amateur and professional winners. The youth awards will be announced at Wednesday’s banquet.

• Some interesting news from across Washington, where Lincoln High in Tacoma recently suspended its girls’ basketball coach Kevin Strozier. Now the team, which is led by Georgia Tech-bound Alex Montgomery and is 17-5, has voted not to play againt Kentlake in the first round of the postseason if he’s not reinstated.

• It’s prep day in the Seattle Times, and Sideline Smitty writes about the essence of wrestling. Sounds like a cologne. A really bad smelling cologne.

The paper also has coverage of Lakeside (Seattle) High’s playoff win and Mercer Island’s upset of Issaquah.