Locally: Former Central Valley standout Riley Sine honored for athletic, academic acheivements

Riley Sine had a highly successful four-year running career at Northwest University in Kirkland, Washington, that was capped by a stellar senior season.

Perhaps the best came last.

The former Central Valley runner, four times an All-American for putting one foot in front of another with the best in the country, was named to the 2019-20 College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) NAIA Division Academic All-America Men’s Track & Field/Cross Country team with a 3.83 grade-point average.

“I’m really excited that Riley is receiving this tremendous honor,” Northwest head coach Mark Mandi said. “This is a testament to the endurance he possesses to work exceedingly hard as a student, a value that his parents instilled in all their kids.

“Over the years at NU, Riley has collected a number of academic and athletic honors, but this award recognizes the high level of achievement that it takes to be both a top student and a top athlete. It is a huge honor, and I’m so proud of him!”

Sine’s senior season included his first NAIA Cross Country All-America honor following a 17th-place finish in the 8,000-meter men’s championship race after he won the Cascade College Conference men’s title and a second Indoor Track All-America award, this one at 5,000.

He was the 2019-20 CCC Men’s Cross Country Runner of the Year, USTFCCCA West Region Men’s Athlete of the Year, NAIA first-team District 4 All-Academic and Academic All-CCC in both cross country and track and field for a second straight year.

Sine was also an NAIA Indoor All-American at 3,000 as a junior and an Outdoor All-American at 5,000 as a sophomore.

College scene

Thirty athletes from the area – 14 at Idaho, 13 at Eastern Washington, two at Montana and one at Montana State – were named to Big Sky Conference All-Academic teams for spring quarter 2020 with grade-point averages of 3.20 or better. Six were honored for a fourth straight year.

Eastern Washington

Men’s outdoor track & field: Isaac Barville, junior, University HS; Parker Bowden, senior, Central Valley/Community Colleges of Spokane; Liam Bracken, sophomore, Republic; Grant Hannan, so., CV; Carter Ledwith, so., Lewis and Clark; Domenic Rehm, sr., Medical Lake/CCS; Jack Sloan, jr., U-Hi.

Women’s outdoor track & field: Emma Chappell, so., LC; Chrissy Fitzgerald, jr., Ferris; Hailey Leeking, so., North Central; Maggie Nelson, sr., Liberty; Alyssa Oates, so., Wilbur-Creston.

Men’s tennis: Jeremy Mueller, jr., Spokane.

Idaho

• Men’s outdoor track & field: Josiah Anderson, sr., Logos (Moscow); Spencer Barrera, fr., Mt. Spokane; Mack Baxter, sr., West Valley; Ryan Kline, fr., CV; Grady Leonard, jr., Coeur d’Alene HS; Ben Shaw, so., Riverside. -indicates 4th award.
• Women’s outdoor track & field: Julia Hayes, fr., Valley Christian; Anna Pecha, soph., CV; Erica Pecha, soph., CV; Jordyn Rauer, sr., WV; Kara Story, sr., CdA HS; Krista Story, sr., CdA HS. -indicates 4th award.

Men’s golf: Jack Plaster, so., Gonzaga Prep. Women’s golf: Grace Frazier, jr., Clarkston.

Montana

Women’s outdoor track & field: Olivia Ellis, sr., LC. Softball: Anne Mari Petrino, sr., Pullman. -indicates 4th award.

Montana State

Women’s golf: Kelly Hopper, sr., Gonzaga Prep.

• Eastern Washington student-athletes have stretched their streak of consecutive quarters with a departmentwide grade-point average of 3.0 or higher to 39. The Eagles’ 275 student-athletes compiled a 3.43 during spring quarter.

All 12 athletic programs had at least a 3.01 GPA with 11 coming in at 3.47 or better, led by men’s tennis at 3.91. Golf (3.84) and soccer (3.82) led the women’s programs. Basketball had the second best men’s GPA at 3.74 and football improved from 2.93 in the winter to 3.47.

There were 51 student-athletes with 4.0 GPAs with an additional 120 at 3.5 or higher and 55 between 3.0 and 3.49.

• Eastern Washington’s incoming tennis recruiting class, which consists of Scout Mathews and Jennifer Kida, is ranked for the first time in program history by TennisRecruiting.net. The Eagles are No. 15 among what it considers midmajor schools – those not in a Power Five conference.

Mathews, who lives in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, and attends the Van Der Meer Tennis Academy, is rated by TennisRecruiting.net as a top-50 five-star class of 2020 recruit who is undefeated against other five-star recruits in the last year.

Kida, from Wilmington, California, attends the California Connection Academy and has had success internationally in tournaments in New Zealand, Nicaragua, Curacao and St. Lucia.

• Gonzaga women’s soccer coach Chris Warren appointed rising seniors Jordan Thompson and Maggie Conners and rising junior Sophia Braun to serve as Bulldogs captains for the 2020 season. It will be Thompson’s third straight season in the role.

Golf

David Butters, a member at Deer Park Golf Club, has found his favorite hole on the north Spokane County course. Twice in a two-week period – on June 6 and again on June 20 – Butters scored holes-in-one on the 155-yard fourth hole using a 6-iron.

• Robert Taylor scored a hole-in-one on the 97-yard seventh hole at The Creek at Qualchan on June 22 with a pitching wedge.

• Ryan Glasunow scored a hole-in-one on the 165-yard ninth hole at Hangman Valley Golf Course with a 7-iron on Wednesday (June 24).

• Dan Griffith scored a hole-in-one on the 147-yard fifth hole at Twin Lakes Village Golf Club on Thursday (June 25) using an 8-iron.

Hockey

Ben Thornton, a 16-year-old Spokane Chiefs prospect who was their first-round pick in the 2019 Western Hockey League bantam draft, has been invited to Hockey Canada’s under-17 development camp July 19-25.

The online camp with 64 forwards and 113 total players will focus on player development as Canada prepares for the 2020 World Under-17 Hockey Challenge.

Thornton, a 6-foot, 153-pound forward from Agassiz, British Columbia, played one game for the Chiefs as an underage in Victoria last season. He had 40 points (16 goals, 24 assists) in 34 games with Yale Hockey Academy Prep last season.

Softball

Kelsey Gumm, who used her arm and bat to lead Central Valley to a third-place finish in the 2018 State 4A tournament, is transferring to the University of Dayton after two seasons at Seton Hall.

The right-hander, a three-time All-GSL first-team selection and 2018 GSL MVP, was named Seton Hall’s Sophomore Scholar-Athlete of the Year in 2019-20.

After switching from relieving as a freshman to a starting role during the COVID-19-abbreviated 2020 season, Gumm pitched 50 innings in 16 games with a team-leading 4-3 record and a 28/13 strikeout-to-walk ratio. She had three complete games in eight starts and two shutouts.

Miscellany

Brooke Cushman Henze, a Lewiston native in her 14th year as an administrator in the athletic department at Lewis-Clark State College and her third as athletic director, has been voted by her peers as Frontier Conference Athletic Director of the Year.

Henze, an All-Inland Empire League performer at Lewiston HS who played on L-C State’s nationals-qualifying women’s basketball teams from 1997-2001 before graduating in 2002, went on to earn a master’s degree from Gonzaga in 2007.

She has been the director of the Avista NAIA Baseball World Series since 2011 and has won numerous awards, including the 2019 Women’s Leaders in College Sports Administrator of the Year in the NAIA.

• Gary Picone, who spent nearly 4½ decades at Lewis-Clark State as an athlete, coach and administrator and collected a shelf-full of trophies through the years, has added another.

The Frontier Conference named the L-C State and NAIA baseball hall of famer the 2020 recipient of its highest honor, the Ron “Swede” Kenison Award, that goes to an individual for outstanding contributions to the conference over a long period of time.

• Kyle Greene, who grew up in Lewiston and spent two years playing baseball at LSCS before embarking on a five-year minor league career, is one of four individuals and four teams selected for induction into the L-C State Athletic Hall of Fame on April 24, 2021.

Primarily a third baseman, Greene had one of the more productive single seasons in school history in 2008. He led the team in batting average (.428), home runs (19), RBIs (94) and doubles (30, a school record) and was named NAIA Player of the Year after leading the Warriors to the NAIA championship.