Locally: Spokane Sports Commission announces finalists for Spokane Youth Sports Awards
Finalists for the 2019 Spokane Youth Sports Awards have been announced by the Spokane Sports Commission.
(All athletes are from high schools unless otherwise noted.)
1B/2B/1A Coach of the Year: Brandy Brown, volleyball, Oakesdale; Randy Cornwell, football, Colville; Clark Vining, basketball, Colton.
2A/3A/4A Coach of the Year: Travis Hughes, wrestling, Mt. Spokane; Matty McIntyre, basketball, Gonzaga Prep; Dempsey Ortega, cross country, North Central.
1B/2B/1A Top Female High School Sports Team: Colton basketball, Northwest Christian softball, Oakesdale volleyball.
1B/2B/1A Top Male High School Sports Team: Colville football, Colville wrestling, Freeman baseball, Odessa football.
2A/3A/4A Top Female High School Sports Team: East Valley basketball, Mt. Spokane volleyball, North Central cross country.
2A/3A/4A Top Male High School Sports Team: Gonzaga Prep basketball, Gonzaga Prep golf, Mt. Spokane wrestling.
Non-High School Sports Top Female Athlete: Hannah Carver, racquetball, Spokane Club; Megan Carver, racquetball, Spokane Club; Cassidy Wilson, competitive precision smallbore rifle and air rifle, Spokane Junior Rifle Club.
Non-High School Sports Top Male Athlete: Phillip Croft, wheelchair track/road racing/basketball, ParaSport Spokane; Braxton Mikesell, powerlifting/wrestling, Washington USA Powerlifting; Akio Yamada, judo, Pacific Judo Academy.
High School Sports Top Female Athlete: Aspyn Adams, basketball, Mt. Spokane; Allie Janke, cross country/track, North Central; Dakota Patchen, basketball, Colton.
High School Sports Top Male Athlete: Trent Baun, wrestling, Colville; Chase Tebbets, wrestling, Mead; Anton Watson, basketball, Gonzaga Prep.
Against All Odds Honorees: Freeman High School Athletics; Jordyn Goldsmith, volleyball/basketball/golf, Freeman.
Basketball
Donny Daniels, a member of the Gonzaga men’s coaching staff the past nine years, is in the inaugural class inducted into the A STEP UP Assistant Coaches Hall of Fame last week in Atlanta.
While the 64-year-old Daniels has retired from Gonzaga, he’s expected to join Utah’s staff as director of operations as he winds down toward full retirement.
During his assistant coaching tenure, Daniels went to five Final Fours with three programs (Gonzaga, 2017; UCLA, 2006, ’07 and ’08; and Utah, 1998), with a national championship game appearance with each program.
The Zags went 277-49 with Daniels on the staff, making the NCAA Tournament each year and winning eight West Coast Conference regular-season titles and seven WCC Tournament titles.
College scene
Rylie Pease, a Princeton sophomore from Cheney, won her first Ivy League javelin championship at the 2019 Ivy League Heptagonal Championships last weekend, icing it with a throw of 143 feet, 5 inches on her last attempt.
Pease, runner-up a year ago who became the school record holder in the event this spring at 157-6, earned her first-team All-Ivy League honors with the victory.
• Sierra Everman, a Community Colleges of Spokane sophomore from North Central, was named Northwest Athletic Conference Women’s Track & Field Athlete of the Week after she established the top mark in the conference this season with a 15.71-second win in the Spokane Memorial.
“Sierra has not had a sub-16 second hurdles race since her junior year in high school four seasons ago, and (she) didn’t even compete in track and field her first two years (at CCS),” Sasquatch coach John Spatz said. “She now leads the conference.”
• Whitworth’s inaugural lacrosse season produced the Pirates’ first All-Northwest Conference selections.
Midfielder Trinity Frank from Gonzaga Prep, who finished in the top 10 in the NWC in draw controls and groundballs, and defender Kalista Fourre, who led the Pirates with 14 draw controls, were named to the second team. Both are freshmen.
• Washington State sophomore Michaela Bayerlova has been named a repeater on the 2019 All-Pac-12 Conference Women’s Tennis first team and senior teammate Tiffany Mylonas received honorable mention. It is the first Pac-12 honor for Mylonas.
• Women’s tennis player Rylee Braeden and men’s track distance runner Isaac Barville have been selected the Eastern Washington athletic department April Scholar-Athletes of the Month.
Braeden, a sophomore with a 3.62 GPA, helped lead the Eagles to a runner-up regular-season finish in the Big Sky Conference. She had a 4-2 record at No. 3 singles and 5-1 at No. 1 doubles during the month, and was instrumental in the Eagles defeating Sacramento State for the first time in program history and ending Idaho’s undefeated conference run.
Barville, a University High product who will graduate this spring with a 3.47 GPA, recorded the ninth-fastest time in school history in the 1,500 (3:49.95) in mid-April in one of his three 1,500 victories during the month.
• Five athletes with area ties, including Wyatt Setian, a Montana State Billings sophomore shortstop from Post Falls, were named to the 2019 Great Northwest Athletic Conference baseball all-conference team.
Setian, second team as a freshman, was a unanimous first-team selection. He was joined by Western Oregon senior second baseman Patrick Chung, who started his career at Gonzaga.
The second team included two others whose careers started elsewhere, Parker Price (GU), a Northwest Nazarene junior second baseman who was on the first team in 2018, and Bennett Tabaracci (Community Colleges of Spokane), a Northwest Nazarene senior outfielder.
The honorable mention list includes Saint Martin’s senior outfielder Colton Peha from Central Valley and Walla Walla CC.
• Gonzaga honored its 79 outgoing senior athletes and passed out five major awards at the Evening of Excellence last Sunday night inside the McCarthey Athletic Center.
Sophie Whittle of women’s tennis was the Female Senior Athlete of the Year; Josh Perkins of men’s basketball was the Male Senior Athlete of the Year; women’s cross country runner Kelly Gilbert and men’s soccer player Jake Kempf were named Scholar-Athletes of the Year; and volleyball’s Faith Smith, a many-time Student-Athlete Advisory Committee officer, earned the Leadership Award.
Additionally, a school-record 40 student-athletes were named to the Gonzaga Chapter of Chi Alpha Sigma, the national collegiate athlete honor society. Whittle, Gilbert, Kempf and Smith are in the group.
• The Gonzaga women’s Varsity 8, which had four runner-up finishes during April, one producing its season-best time for 2,000 meters of 6 minutes, 38.26 seconds, was named the West Coast Conference Crew of the Month for the first time this season.
Crew members are Alexa Jadallah, coxswain, junior; Lindey English, senior; Lauren English, sr.; Maren Johnson, jr.; Charlotte Lepp, jr.; Anise Potjes, so.; Olivia Lada, sr.; Zoe Calambokidis, sophomore; and Lauren McCallum, so.
• Washington State women’s rowing collected more than 2,000 pounds of food and $400 for the Pullman Food Bank as part of the National Association of Letter Carriers Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive last Saturday. The Pullman Food Bank, a division of Pullman Child Welfare, keeps all food collected locally.
EWU Hall of Fame
The 1980 Eastern Washington men’s track and field team, which had two top-six national finishes and more than doubled the point total of the runner-up in winning the district championship, will be among the 19th class of inductees into the Eastern Athletics Hall of Fame on Sept. 28.
Coached by Jerry Martin, a 2001 hall of fame inductee, the Eagles finished fourth in the NCAA Division II championships, sixth in the NAIA Championships and had a 289-144 margin over Central Washington in winning the NAIA District 1 title.
The 18th team to be inducted into the hall of fame, but the first from track and field, was led by national champions Vic White and Brad Boland.
White won six NAIA championships in the high jump and triple jump from 1978-80. In 1980, he won the triple jump (52-8) and was second in the high jump (7-0). His 52-8 triple jump in 1980 still stands as the school record.
In his lone season at Eastern after transferring from Everett Community College, Boland had six top-six finishes at the NAIA and Division II championships, winning the D-II discus with a throw of 177-0, and set four school records. His 193-4 1/2 discus mark at the NAIA meet still stands as a school record
Individual members of the 2019 hall of fame class and a recipient of the Hall of Fame Service and Contribution Award will be announced in the coming weeks. An induction ceremony/breakfast at 8 a.m. will be held at Reese Court. The inductees will be introduced at halftime of EWU’s football game that day against North Dakota at Roos Field.
Golf
The annual Bob White Memorial Golf Tournament, a fundraiser for the Idaho men’s basketball program, will take place at the Lewiston Golf & Country Club on Friday. Play begins at 1 p.m. with a shotgun start. The $90 entry fee includes dinner. The field is limited to 64 teams.
Money raised will go toward the Bob White Endowment Fund, which provides post-eligibility assistance to men’s basketball players as well as funding summer school.
Hockey
Spokane Chiefs assistant coach Scott Burt has been named the head coach of Team British Columbia for the upcoming 2019 WHL Cup
Burt, who has been with the Chiefs for six seasons, was originally hired prior to the 2013-14 Western Hockey League campaign after a 13-year, 739-game professional career that included eight season with the Idaho Steelheads in the East Coast Hockey League.
The WHL Cup, formerly known as the Western Canada U-16 Challenge Cup, takes place in October and features the top under-16 players from British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Letters of intent
Gonzaga men’s track & cross country: Jackson Lyne, distances, Camas, Washington.
Gonzaga men’s tennis: Theo McDonald, sophomore transfer from Kentucky; Brandon Park, Bakersfield, California.
Idaho women’s track/cross country: Elise Abbott, 400m/distances, Sprague, Oregon.
Pickleball
Tyson McGuffin of Hayden, the world’s No. 1-ranked professional pickleball player, captured his second major title in less than two months last weekend when he won the men’s professional singles title at the 2019 U.S. Open Pickleball Championships in Naples, Florida.
McGuffin, who won the 2019 International Indoor Pickleball Championship the last weekend in March, defeated Ben Johns of Fort Meyers, Florida, 11-5, 11-7 to win the gold medal. McGuffin also won gold in men’s 30 doubles with his Selkirk Sports coach, Morgan Evans.
Four other members of the Hayden-based Selkirk Sport team also captured medals.
Former top-75 women’s professional tennis player Cammy MacGregor figured in three medals – gold in the women’s doubles senior pro division, silver in the women’s singles senior pro division, and silver in mixed senior pro doubles. Also, the sibling tandem of Riley and Lindsey Newman earned the bronze medal in mixed doubles pro, and Steve Deakin captured bronze in men’s pro doubles.