Crossover Volleyball Has 32 Teams
Notebook
When you’re putting on what may be the largest one-day high school volleyball tournament in the country, you sweat the details.
So Buzzie Welch can be forgiven if he’s appeared preoccupied lately.
“I’ve been trying to think of any possible thing I’ve missed,” Welch said about Saturday’s 32-team Action Sportswear Crossover Classic.
“We’ve already met with the site directors and we’ll meet with them again before the tournament,” said Welch, the Lewis and Clark coach who co-founded the tourney in 1991 with Shadle Park’s Linda Sheridan.
The tourney drew eight teams in ‘91. Now all nine Greater Spokane League teams and 23 others from around the region are entered.
Welch frets about the organizational details because last year’s tourney, a 17-team affair, ran late and stoked some tempers. One problem is working in five GSL-counting matches during the morning.
The field is divided into eight pools at four sites - Lewis and Clark, Shadle, Ferris and North Central. Each pool winner advances to Shadle to play for places 1-8. No. 2’s head to NC for places 9-16, No. 3’s to LC for places 17-24 and No. 4’s to Ferris for places 25-32.
Fife beat Gonzaga Prep for last year’s title. Pasco finished third, Ferris fourth, Mead fifth, Prairie sixth, Shadle seventh and NC eighth.
Top (non-GSL) competition should come from St. Maries, an Idaho A-2 finalist for 15 consecutive years, Fife, Auburn, Prairie, Walla Walla, defending State A champion Colfax, Eisenhower, Coeur d’Alene, Frontier League-leading East Valley, Pasco and Davis (Yakima).
Each pool is scheduled to start at 8 a.m. Semifinals are expected at 5 p.m., the title match at 7:45.
Welch said the District 8-AAA tournament originally scheduled for University then announced as returning to Spokane Falls Community College - is again at U-Hi.
Also, the Region IV-AAA tournament is tentatively scheduled for U-Hi and Central Valley.
Cross country
The Scholastic Aptitude Test and an upcoming test in Richland have diverted some runners from Saturday’s 12th annual Bullpup Invitational.
Some senior cross country runners, such as host Gonzaga Prep’s No. 2, Kirk Larson, must miss the 5,000-meter race at Finch Arboretum to take the SAT.
Other teams will skip the Bullpup for Richland’s invitational. Not that Richland’s format is any better, but that course will be the scene of the Nov. 2 Region IV-AAA cross country meet.
G-Prep boys coach Tony Maucione finds it odd that Richland or any other team can feel out a course before region. In Spokane, it’s a violation to practice on the Hangman Valley Golf Course layout prior to region.
By the Sept. 27 Bullpup registration deadline, Maucione didn’t know if the defending girls champions - Shadle Park’s team and Jaime Stone of Deer Park - would compete. Chewelah’s team and G-Prep’s Jim Rucker, last year’s boys winners, are expected back.
Many of the 22 entered teams come from Idaho or the Washington Class A or B ranks. The event begins at 9:30 a.m.; varsity races are at 11 (girls) and 11:30.
, DataTimes