Tekoa’s Scaroni named to Team USA
Susannah Scaroni from Tekoa, a two-time Bloomsday winner who has stamped herself as one of the elite women’s wheelchair racers in the world, has been named to Team USA for the International Paralympic Committee Athletics Marathon World Championships on April 26 in London in association with the London Marathon.
Scaroni, 23, a 2014 graduate of the University of Illinois, was a member of Team USA for the London 2012 Paralympic Games where she placed eighth in the women’s marathon.
She won the 2013 Los Angeles Marathon as well as the Twin Cities Marathon in both 2013 and 2014. Scaroni also placed in the top 10 at the 2012 Boston Marathon and came in second at the 2012 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota.
College scene
Jason Bay, a Gonzaga baseball standout in 1999 and 2000, will be inducted into the West Coast Conference Hall of Honor as part of the 2015 class on March 7 in Las Vegas during ceremonies in conjunction with the WCC basketball tournaments.
A native of Trail, British Columbia, Bay was an outfielder who needed just two years to leave his mark on the GU record books after transferring from North Idaho College. His 35 home runs are still the third-most in school history, and he remains seventh in batting average with a .374 career mark.
His junior year in 1999, he hit 20 home runs, drove in 74 runs and scored 65 as GU won 27 games and finished second in the WCC.
After graduation, Bay went on to have the most successful professional baseball career than any former Bulldog. He was National League Rookie of the Year in 2004 with the Pittsburgh Pirates; was named to the All-Star Game three times, twice with the Pirates and once with the Boston Red Sox; won the Silve Slugger award in 2009 with the Red Sox; and was a three-time Tip O’Neill Award winner as the best Canadian baseball player. He amassed 1,200 hits and 222 home runs in 11 big-league seasons that ended after the 2013 season with the Seattle Mariners.
The WCC annually inducts a former athlete from each member school to the Hall of Honor. Bay, the first member of GU baseball team to be honored, is the seventh Zag selected.
• James Brown, a Crown College sophomore from East Valley, was named the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference men’s basketball Player of the Week for the fifth time in 10 weeks after averaging 27 points as the NCAA Division III school in St. Bonifacius, Minnesota, split two games last weekend.
Brown is the second leading scorer in the UMAC with a 16.7 average and is sixth with 122 rebounds in 19 games.
• Tyler Harvey, a junior guard at Eastern Washington with a 3.60 grade-point average as a communication studies major, is one of five players selected to the Capital One CoSIDA Academic Division I All-District VIII men’s basketball team by members of the College Sports Information Directors of America.
The group, which also includes Nigel Williams-Goss, a Washington sophomore with a 3.74 GPA in pre-social science, will be on the national ballot from which the CoSIDA Academic All-America teams are selected. Harvey is the fifth EWU player on the all-district team since 2001.
• KC McConnell and George Valle from Whitworth have been named to Capital One Division III Academic All-District VIII basketball teams by the College Sports Information Directors of America for the first time.
McConnell, from Clarkston, was selected to the women’s team with a 3.94 GPA with a double major in kinesiology and secondary education. Valle, from Bellevue, Washington, was named to the men’s team with a 3.77 GPA in business marketing. Both are juniors.
Only five players were named to each district team and are eligible for Division III Academic All-America teams.
• Stacey Barr, an Idaho senior guard from Australia, was named to the Capitol One Academic Division I All-District VII women’s basketball team by the College Sports Information Directors of America with a 3.47 GPA as an exercise science and health major and is eligible for the women’s All-America teams.
• Basketball generated the Eastern Washington athletics department Scholar-Athletes of Month for February.
Senior Lexie Nelson from Butte, Montana, was selected for the women’s honor. She has a 3.75 GPA as an exercise science major and helped the Eagles to a 4-0 start in Big Sky Conference play by scoring in double figures in six games in January. She missed just two free throws in 31 attempts and has a 14.3 scoring average.
Tyler Harvey, a junior from Torrance, California, with a 3.60 GPA in communications, was the men’s recipient. Harvey opened January with a 39-point performance and reached double figures in all eight games as the Eagles went 7-1.
• Ashlee Pedersen, a Montana freshman from Mead, was named to the Big Sky Conference fall all-academic team in women’s soccer. To qualify, an athlete must have a minimum GPA of 3.30.
Golf
Wendy Ward of Edwall, Washington, a four-time winner on the LPGA tour, has been selected as one of the assistant captains for the U.S. team at the Solheim Cup in Germany Sept. 18-20. U.S. captain Juli Inkster also named Pat Hurst as her other assistant for the women’s equivalent of the men’s Ryder Cup when the Americans face a European team. Ward, 41, played on U.S. Solheim Cup teams in 2002, ’03 and ’05 with the Americans winning in ’02 and ’05. She had a record of 2-8-1 in her matches. “I think she brings a calmness and a confident attitude to the team,” Inkster said of Ward. “The girls love her. That’s the key.”
Hockey
Nick Farmer, you could say, is on a “scholarship drive.”
The 20-year-old Spokane native, playing his third and final season in the North American Hockey League, considered one of the top junior leagues in the U.S., had a month of January for the Wichita Falls, Texas, Wildcats he hopes will earn him a scholarship to a Division I university.
Farmer, who played as a 16-year-old for the Spokane Braves, had nine goals and nine assists in 11 games last month, scoring at least a point in nine of the games with six multi-point games. Two of his goals were game-winners as the Wildcats went 7-4 to stay in the hunt for a playoff berth in the far-flung 24-team league.
Farmer, selected to play for the South Division in the NAHL Top Prospects Tournament Feb. 23-25 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is third on his team in both goals (17) and assists (22), second in points (39) and tied for first with five game-winning goals.
Letters of intent
Baseball: Community Colleges of Spokane – Zach Day, outfielder, Rogers; Stephen Streltzoff, pitcher, Mt. Spokane; Jared Smith, outfielder/pitcher, University; Ben Castro, pitcher, Mead; Dominic Bonilla, catcher, Cheney.
Football: Montana Tech – Ryan Ward, Cheney.
Women’s soccer: Gonzaga – Ariana Pumpelly, center back, Tualatin, Oregon; Maddie Kincaid, forward/midfield, Portland; Hope Tsuneyoshi, midfield/center back, Honolulu; Kawai Makue, forward, Kailua, Hawaii; Lucy Ferrari, defense, Encinitas, California; McKenna Ferrera, midfield, Lake Washington (Kirkland); India Jencks, midfield, University Prep (Seattle); Presley Azarcon, defense, Draper, Utah; Sammy Nishiyama, midfield, Honolulu.
Eastern Washington – Alexis Stephenson, forward, Chiawana (Pasco); Gabrielle Gines, defense/midfield, Littleton, Colorado; Megan Spataro, defense, Olympia; Brenna Blaser, midfield, Mountain View (Boise); Victoria Lindstrom, defense, Battle Ground (Vancouver, Washington); Devan Talley, forward, Issaquah, Washington; Josie Self, defendse, Pennisula (Vaughn, Washington); Emily Bringgold, defense, Folsom, California; Jenny Chavez, midfield, Newhall, California; Maia Inniss, defense, Granada Hills, California; Allison Raniere, forward/midfield, Tucson, Arizona; Alexis von Schottenstein, forward, Gardnerville, Nevada; Kayla Goebel, defense, Phoeniz, Arizona.
Idaho – Clara Gomez , Orange, Calififornia; Ashley Anaya-Webb, Yorba Linda, California; Megan Goo, Kaneohe, Hawaii; Kayla Watanabe, Honolulu; Reed Richardson, Portland; Summer “Pikake” Kaneshiro, Makakilo Hawaii; Amanda Poertner, Fullerton, California; Kelly Dopke, Arcadia, California; Claire Johnson, Snoqualmie, Washington; Kayleigh Frederick, Temecula, California.
Tennis: Gonzaga – Graciela Rosas, Mexicali, Mexico; Sophie Whittle, Arroyo Grande, California; Nevada Apollo, Las Vegas, Nevada.