Local briefs: EWU track and field champion Kurt Kraemer named to school’s Hall of Fame
Kurt Kraemer, a four-time Big Sky Conference track and field champion and 2003 All-American, is the fifth athlete announced in the Class of 2018 for induction into the Eastern Washington Athletics Hall of Fame.
Kraemer capped his career from 1999-2003 by being named Field Athlete of the Meet at the Big Sky Conference Championships after winning the triple and long jumps and finishing fourth in the high jump. He followed that by becoming just the second Eastern track and field athlete to gain NCAA Division I All-America honors, doing it in the triple jump.
His top career marks in the triple jump (53 feet, 5 1/2 inches indoors, 52-4 outdoors) rank first and second, respectively, in school history. His best indoor long jump (24-7 1/4 ) still stands as a school record, and his best high jump (6-9 3/4) is seventh. He had 11 top-three finishes in Big Sky Championships (seven indoors) and was seven times a Big Sky All-Academic selection.
The 18th class induction breakfast and ceremony will start at 8 a.m. Sept. 22 at Reese Court. The public is invited; cost is $20 per person. Guests may register online at http://goeags.com/HOF. Inductees will also be honored at halftime of EWU’s football game that day against Cal Poly. Kickoff is 1:05 p.m.
Administration
Washington State director of athletics Patrick Chun announced the addition of Chris Park and Bryan Blair to the Cougars’ senior administrative staff.
Park will serve as WSU’s senior associate athletic director for external relations, overseeing communications, marketing, ticketing, creative services and video operations, and will serve as WSU’s liaison with IMG.
He has spent the previous five years as senior associate A.D. for external operations and development at Texas-El Paso, where his duties included overseeing ticketing, marketing and video production and graphic design. He has also worked at Texas State, Sam Houston State and his alma mater, Texas A&M.
Blair will serve as senior associate A.D. for administration and will be the sport administrator for football, swimming, tennis and track and field. Additionally, he will oversee the student-athlete development and well-being areas.
He has spent the last four years at Rice as a senior association A.D. for sport administration and compliance. He previously worked at South Carolina and in the NCAA national headquarters.
College scene
Chanelle Molina, who will be a junior at Washington State, helped Team USA to the gold medal in women’s basketball at the inaugural FISU America Games in Sao Paulo, Brazil, last weekend.
Team USA was 4-0, defeating host Brazil 59-42 in its closest game and the final game that both countries entered unbeaten. Team USA defeated its opponents by nearly 44 points per game in the event sanctioned by the International University Sports Federation.
• Two Washington State Cougars earned gold medals at the 2018 World Rowing U-23 Championships July 25-29 in Pozan, Poland.
Ivy Elling Quaintance, who will be a junior, was a member of the Canadian Eight that charged from behind to win the A Final. Lisa Gutfleisch, who will be a sophomore, won the women’s single sculls B Final for her native Germany.
• Incoming Gonzaga freshman Federica Torre of Italy won her second golf tournament in three months when she captured the 54-hole Grand Prix City of Cervia late last month by nine strokes with a 6-under-par 207, capped by a 5-under 66 in the final round.
Torre had won the 64th Women’s and Men’s City of Rome Golden Cup in early April.
• Graciela Rosas, who will be a senior at Gonzaga, captured her second tennis championship of the summer last weekend, winning the women’s singles title at the 88th Balboa Open in San Diego. She had earlier won in Claremont, California.
• Idaho and Eastern Washington were honored by the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association with WBCA Academic Top 25 awards.
Coach Jon Newlee’s Idaho Vandals compiled a team GPA of 3.691, sixth best in Division I. Coach Wendy Schuller’s Eastern Eagles tied for 18th with a 3.50 GPA, the 17th time EWU has been on the list and the 16th under Schuller.
• Whitworth, Washington State and Idaho swimming teams were recognized for academic excellence by the College Swimming Coaches Association of America.
Whitworth sophomore Hanna Galbraith was a Division III women’s first-team Scholar All-American with a 3.84 GPA spring semester after being honorable mention in 2017. Owen Lempert, a sophomore with a 3.535 GPA in the spring, and freshman Ryan Grady (3.92) earned men’s honorable mention. Lempert was also honorable mention in 2017.
Additionally, the Whitworth men (3.23) and women (3.45) were Division III Scholar All-America teams.
WSU junior Jasmine Martgetts and freshmen Emily Cook, Mackenzie Duarte and Taylor McCoy were Division I women’s Scholar-All-Americans honorable mention with GPAs of 3.50 or higher. The Cougars (3.47) and Idaho (3.63) women were Scholar All-America teams. It was Martgetts’ second straight honorable mention award.
Golf
Billy Bomar, a PGA professional at Prairie Falls Golf Course in Post Falls, led his foursome to victory in the team competition and tied for 10th in the Senior Oregon Open Invitational last week at Wildhorse Resort and Casino in Pendleton, Oregon, to lead the showing by area competitors in the PNW PGA event.
Bomar and amateur partners Dave Steinbach and Lloyd Dresser, both also of Prairie Falls, and Mike Kerns of Meridian Valley Country Club in Kent, Washington, combined for a winning score of 44 under par.
In the 54-hole feature, Bomar shot 70-68-72 for a 6-under 210. Next on the list of area golfers was Mark Gardner from The Creek at Qualchan with a 3-under 213 and a tie for 16th.
• Recent Washington State graduate Alivia Brown began her professional career last weekend at the Cactus Tour stop at Mission Hills, California, tying for sixth at 2-over 218.
Brown, who capped her amateur career earlier in July by finishing second in the 117th Pacific Northwest Golf Association Women’s Amateur, turned in rounds of 74-76-68 at Mission Hills, the 68 matching the low round of the tournament.
The Cactus is a tour for women golf professionals in the Western United States. There are six tournaments remaining on its 2018 schedule with six other possible events.
Hockey
Four Spokane Chiefs prospects have been named to their provinces’ short lists for the 2019 Canada Winter Games Feb. 16-22 in Red Deer, Alberta.
Forwards Blake Sweitlikoff and Logan Cox and defenseman Chase Friedt-Mohr, Spokane’s third-, fourth- and fifth-round selections, respectively, in the 2018 WHL Bantam Draft, are on the Saskatchewan list.
Forward Grady Lane, the Chiefs’ eighth-round pick, is on the Manitoba short list.
Letters of intent
Washington State rowing – Greta Geier, Colfax, three-sport athlete earned nine varsity letters in volleyball, basketball and softball; Leena Kattel, Tartu, Estonia; Megan Duthart, London; Emma Conaty, Edmonds, Washington; Olivia Olmsted, Portland.
Washington State women’s tennis – Yang Lee, Taichung, Taiwan.
Rowing
Kara Soucek, a 2016 Gonzaga graduate, has been selected stroke on the U.S. senior national women’s quadruple sculls boat for the 2018 World Rowing Championships Sept. 8-16 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
The former first-team All-American and two-time WCC Rower of the Year, Soucek was a spare for the U.S. senior national boat in 2017. She has been rowing sculls for three years.
Track & field
Alissa Brooks-Johnson, a recent Washington State graduate and two-time Pac-12 champion in the heptathlon, finished fourth in her specialty for the United States last weekend against Germany in the Thorpe Cup in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Brooks-Johnson compiled 5,868 points, well less than her personal best of 5,977, to help the U.S. defeat Germany 17,809-17,575 in the annual competition between the countries in the heptathlon and decathlon. Her best finish was a third in the 800m. Sophie Weissenberg of Germany won with 6,165 points. Lindsay Schwartz was second for the U.S. with 6,050.
Germany won the decathlon.
Volleyball
Kelly Bonja, who played for coach Leslie Flores-Cloud during their club days in southern California, became the first assistant hired by the new Eastern Washington coach.
“I am so excited to have Kelly on board,” Flores-Cloud said. “It was a joy to coach her and she is someone I can trust and build this program with.”
They were together at Club West Volleyball during Bonja’s 16-and-under year and have kept track of each other’s playing and coaching careers, leading to their reuniting.
Bonja, second-team all-conference as a senior at California State Polytechnic in 2012, has been an assistant at Bucknell for more than a year following a nearly four-year stint at Tufts. She was recruiting coordinator among her duties at both schools. In 2016, she was named the AVCA National Assistant Coach of the Year as Tufts advanced to the NCAA Division III Elite Eight.