Fast Break

Softball

Skillingstad wins Gatorade award

Shadle Park’s Samantha Skillingstad has been named Washington Gatorade Softball Player of the Year for the second straight year.

The Highlanders pitcher compiled exceptional numbers during a four-year career for the three-time state finalists and 2007 State 4A champions.

She finished 28-1 for the second straight year for this year’s second-place finishers. She struck out 380 this season and finished her career 97-7 with 1,357 strikeouts.

Skillingstad is the third Greater Spokane League state Gatorade winner this year.

Fellow Shadle student Andrea Nelson was selected last fall in cross country and Central Valley’s Rusty Shellhorn was tabbed for baseball.

Paralympics

Area athletes head to Trials

Team St. Luke’s, the sports team for young athletes with physical disabilities created by St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute, is sending five athletes to the Paralympic Trials in Mesa, Ariz., on Thursday. All athletes who want a shot to make the team for the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing, China, must be at this event.

Bob Hunt, a recent graduate from Riverside High School; Kasey Andrews, a junior at Riverside; Christine Nielson, a junior at North Central; Chelsea McClammer, a freshman at Kiona Benton High; and Amberlynn Weber, a freshman at Central Valley, are the five athletes heading to Mesa.

They are pushing national standard times and will compete alongside elite Paralympians to make the 2008 Paralympic Team.

All have also recently qualified for the Junior National Disability Championship, scheduled July 19-27 at Rutgers University in Piscataway, NJ. The 2008 Paralympic Team will be announced on Monday.

NFL

Ex-Seahawks coach Catlin dies

Tom Catlin, a standout football player at the University of Oklahoma in the 1950s and former defensive coordinator for the Seattle Seahawks, has died. Catlin was 76.

Catlin died Saturday at a hospice in Seattle from complications stemming from a recent surgery, said his brother, Charles Catlin.

Catlin was assistant head coach and defensive coordinator for the Seattle Seahawks from 1983-1995. He earlier worked as an assistant coach for the Dallas Texans and Kansas City Chiefs in the American Football League, then the Los Angeles Rams and Buffalo Bills in the NFL.

He retired from the NFL in 1996 and recently had been ill with Parkinson’s disease, Charles Catlin said.