Whitworth Sends Seven To Tennis Nationals
Seven players will accompany coach Jo Wagstaff when the Whitworth College women’s tennis team makes the school’s first appearance in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics National Tennis Tournament May 19-24 in Tulsa, Okla.
Whitworth sent its men’s tennis team to nationals three straight years from 1969-71 under now-retired coach Ross Cutter, but no women’s team had ever qualified. The Pirates women shared the Northwest Conference of Independent Colleges title with Whitman but won the national berth by virtue of a regular-season sweep of the Missionaries.
Representing Whitworth will be Tara Fiebick, Jodi Baker, Joelle Staudinger, Tara Bonelli, Lisa Peterson, Lisa Benscheidt and Dawn Eliassen.
Awards
Patrick Bears and Kristine Holzer, a pair of rowers for Gonzaga University’s crew teams, were named the Bulldog Club male and female scholar-athletes of the year at the 14th annual Bulldog Club senior athletes luncheon.
Holzer, who graduated from GU in December with a bachelor of business administration degree with a 3.21 grade-point average, was a team captain the past two seasons. She was a member of this year’s Varsity Eight with Coxswain that won the inaugural West Coast Conference Women’s Rowing Championship.
Bears, who has a 3.4 GPA with a major in psychology and a minor in biology, made the Varsity Eight with Coxswain as a sophomore in the fall of 1994. This past season, Gonzaga captured the Cal Cup at the San Diego Crew Classic.
Baseball
Former Coeur d’Alene High standout John Schroeder will miss the 1997 minor-league season thanks to a shoulder injury suffered while snowboarding at Schweitzer Mountain Resort in December.
Schroeder, 21, who is expected to have reconstructive surgery, played at Class A Fort Wayne, Ind., a Minnesota Twins’ farm club, last season. He batted .264 with 14 homers.
Basketball
Ryan Monroe, a 6-foot-3, 180-pound guard from Riverside High School, has signed a letter of intent to attend Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Calif.
Monroe, a Pepsi Scholar-Athlete, averaged 22 points, 6.5 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game in earning All-Frontier League honors and making The Spokesman-Review’s All-Area team. He will play in the coaches’ state all-star game in June.
Spokane teams, led by the Stars girls organization, won nine championships and qualified 11 other teams for national tournaments during Inland Empire Association AAU regional tournaments last month.
Spokane’s boys champions were: Super 7, 11 and under; Flight, 13U; and Converse, 16U, which beat the Packers 62-55 in the title game.
Besides the Packers, other boys national qualifiers were: Sweet Swishers, 2nd, 11U; Storm (2nd) and Burners (3rd), 12U; Hillyard Jaguars, 3rd, 13U; Flash, third, 14U; and Stars, 2nd, 15U.
Whitman County won the senior boys division.
Spokane girls champions were: Stars, 11U, 15U, 16U, 17U and 18U; and Heat, 13U, which beat the Spokane Panthers 62-51 for the title. Other Stars national qualifiers were: 10U, 2nd; 13U, 3rd; 14U, 2nd. The Eastern Washington Stars, 2nd in 18U, also qualified.
College scene
Washington State football player Eboni Wilson and women’s basketball player Doreen Evans have been chosen to represent the Cougars at the 1997 NCAA Foundation Leadership Conference May 27-30 in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.
More than 300 athletes are slated to participate in the conference, where they’ll explore viable solutions to critical issues facing student-athletes around the country.
The University of Idaho was represented by Claudia Leigh on the first team and Katrina Burke on the second when the Big West Conference selected its allconference tennis team.
The Vandals finished second.
Cornell College senior Brooks Clergy of Spokane (Mead High School) had a run-scoring, seventh-inning double to tie the game at 2 before the Rams from Mount Vernon, Iowa, beat Monmouth 3-2.
Junior center fielder Todd Kinley of Spokane (Lewis and Clark) went 9-for-27 (.333) and stole five bases in an 11-game stretch to raise his batting average to .267 for the Wheaton College baseball team.
Kinley also was hit by pitches three times in that stretch, giving him a school-record six this season and 10 for his career. He’s also 8 for 8 in stolen bases.
Junior Shane Wittstruck of Spokane (Gonzaga Prep) ran the lead leg for the Colorado College men’s 4x200 relay team that ran a school-record 1:39.39 in the DeLong Classic in Grinnell, Iowa.
Football
Doctor P.Z. Pearce, who works at Valley Rockwood Clinic, has been named team physician for the Seattle Seahawks’ training camp to be held at Eastern Washington University July 15-Aug. 15.
Pearce, who worked with the Seahawks from 1983-85 when they last trained in Cheney, also has been a member of the United States Olympic medical staff since 1985. He’s served the Triathlon Federation national team and also has worked with the Seattle SuperSonics, Spokane Indians, Whitworth College and EWU.
Tryouts for the Seattle Seahawks sideline dance group, the Sea Gals, will begin Saturday at 9 a.m. in the Kingdome in Seattle. The competition concludes May 12.
Candidates must be at least 18 years of age and have photo identification. Sherri Thompson, a former Sea Gal and choreographer, will be the squad’s director for the 11th year.
Info: (206) 827-9777.
Handball
Jim Slavin of Spokane and Bob Nedd of San Francisco reign as 70-plus doubles champions of the United States Handball Association for a third straight year.
In a 2-hour finals match at the 25th annual event, Slavin and Nedd defeated Arnold Aguilar and Rudy Stadlberger of California 21-18, 21-20.
Hockey
Michael Ingwaldson of Spokane has been selected to play for Team Northwest in the annual Brick Super Novice Tournament, which draws select teams from across the country and Canada, in Edmonton, Alberta, Aug. 3-10.
Ingwaldson, 10, a fourth-grader at Nine Mile Falls Elementary School, is a goaltender who has been playing hockey for two years.
Track and field
Katie Pollock of Mead, third in the State AAA cross country championships last fall, has signed a letter-of-intent to compete at Montana State.
Pollock, who joins the program of former Spokanite Dale Kennedy, has run 3,200 meters in 10:58.06 and the mile in 5:04.02.
Volleyball
Erinn Kelly, a senior at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, Calif., is the second newcomer to sign a volleyball letter-of-intent with Gonzaga University.
“We recruited Erinn for her offensive power,” said first-year head coach Eva Windlin-Jansen.
A four-year letterwinner and team captain, the Berkeley, Calif., native played in 34 matches finishing with 73 service aces, 255 digs and 125 kills from the outside/swing hitting positions.
Anne Marie Walton, a 1995 graduate of Mead High School who has played the past two seasons at North Idaho College, has signed a letter-of-intent to attend Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, N.C.
Walton is a 5-foot-9 right-side hitter who played middle hitter and outside hitter at Mead.
Wrestling
Tommy Owen, son of former North Idaho College wrestling coach John Owen, has been selected to the USA Wrestling Tour Du Monde Team.
Owen, 14, who earned the spot by finishing third recently at the World Team Trials in Chicago, will train with the national team in New York in May and then compete in Warsaw, Poland.
Former North Idaho College wrestler Scot Filius was named Montana’s Class A high school wrestling coach of the year. Filius is the head coach at Havre.
, DataTimes