Locally: Three men, one team from area selected for Northwest Athletic Conference hall

Three men and one team with area ties have been selected for induction in the 2018 Class of the Northwest Athletic Conference Hall of Fame.

Larry Beatty, former Community Colleges of Spokane men’s and women’s cross country and track and field coach, and Vince Hawkins, a football standout at Spokane Falls CC, will be joined in the individual category by former Gonzaga University women’s basketball coach Kelly Graves, who is being honored for his success at Big Bend Community College.

The 1999 CCS men’s track and field team will also be inducted during ceremonies May 31, 2018, at the Red Lion Hotel in Pasco.

Other individuals are Cheryl Holden (coach, women’s basketball, Columbia Basin) and Jon Lane (wrestler, Big Bend). Rick Baumann, former baseball coach and athletic director at Treasure Valley, will receive the NWAC Outstanding Service Award.

Other team inductees are 2004-05 Columbia Basin women’s basketball and 2005 Wenatchee Valley men’s soccer.

Beatty was hired at CCS to coach both the men and women in cross country and track and field after he had won two track and field championships at Clark College and quickly built the most powerful programs in the history of the NWAC.

Beatty’s cross country teams won 10 championships, his track and field teams won 25 titles and he was coach of the year 29 times.

In 1990 Graves took over a struggling BBCC women’s basketball team and in his first year led the Vikings to their first winning season in school history. In year two, they won 23 games (the first school’s women’s basketball team to win 20 games in a season) and finished fourth at the NWAC tournament.

Graves has gone on to highly successful stops in Division I – first at Portland as an assistant, then head coaching jobs at Saint Mary’s, Gonzaga and Oregon with multiple NCAA Tournament appearances.

Hawkins came to SFCC from St. Augustine High School in New Orleans and was an All-NWAACC running back in 1988 and ’89. He led the conference in scoring both years with 12 touchdowns in 1988 and 13 TDs in ’89 and was the NWAACC Offensive Player of the Year in 1988.

He went on to start at Nebraska and helped the Huskers to Big 8 titles and appearances in the Orange Bowl both years.

The ’99 CCS men’s track and field team, led by eight athletes who went on to Division I programs, won the NWAC Championship with a conference-record 204 points, producing one of the largest margins of victory in NWAC history.

Twenty-four athletes were All-Americans after winning 14 individual championships. Beatty said he ranks this as the best of the 13 teams coached at CCS.

College scene

Former Central Valley standout Madison Hovren, a junior at Army West Point, was named Patriot League Women’s Basketball Player of the Week for the third time this season after she scored 23 points in a 107-46 win over St. Joseph’s Brooklyn.

Hovren was one point shy of tying her season high as she hit 10 of 12 shots from the field. She also had seven rebounds, one steal and one assist. One of two players in the conference averaging a double-double, Hovren is third in scoring (16.5) and second in rebounding (10.4).

Max McCullough, a sophomore guard at Eastern Oregon from Post Falls, was the Cascade Collegiate Conference Men’s Basketball Player of the Week after scoring 53 points and playing all 80 minutes as the Mountaineers won their first two conference games of the season. McCullough hit 9 of 18 shots, including four 3-pointers, scoring 35-points in a 93-85 victory over Northwest Christian. The next night his 18 points included driving for the winning basket with 1.9 seconds left and drawing a foul in an 83-80 win over Corbin. He also had seven assists and five rebounds.

Takoda Daubel, a Southern Oregon junior from Shadle Park and Community Colleges of Spokane, was a Daktronics-NAIA Scholar Athlete in men’s soccer. To be eligible, student-athletes must be a junior or senior with a grade-point average of 3.5 or better. Daubel, a pre-medicine major, was named to the Cascade Collegiate Conference All-Academic team as a sophomore in 2016.

Hockey

Garret Hughson, who played 105 regular-season games with the Spokane Chiefs between 2012 and 2015, was named the Western Hockey League Graduate of the Month for December after leading the University of Lethbridge to a pair of wins over provincial rival Calgary on Dec. 2-3.

The second-year goalie from Foremost, Alberta, made 46 saves in a 4-1 win Friday and 29 in a 4-3 overtime victory on Saturday. He also contributed an assist in the Saturday game for a short-handed Pronghorns team that swept while dressing only 14 skaters.

As the Canada West Universities Athletic Association headed into its annual December break, Hughson had a 6-6 record and 3.43 goals-against average.

Letters of intent

Gonzaga men’s tennis – Hunter Egger, Bellevue/Bellevue College.

Washington State women’s rowing – Emma Dockray, Grimsby, Ontario; Gabby Hannen, Nelson, New Zealand; Meg Montgomery, Lantzville, British Columbia.

Washington State women’s soccer – Kelis Barton, D, Renton, Washington.

Volleyball

Margie Ray of the Spokane Area Volleyball Referees Association officiated the championship match of the NCAA Division I Tournament in Kansas City, Missouri, on Dec. 16 as No. 5 seed Nebraska overcame No. 2 seed Florida in four sets for the title.

It was the fifth time in 10 years the veteran Ray was assigned to the championship match.

Two other SAVRA officials also worked the NCAA Division I Tournament. Ben Goodwin was a line judge on first- and second-round matches at University of Washington and on a third-round match at Stanford. Juli Jones served as a line judge on a first-round match at UW.