Dave Trimmer

The words were chilling. “We were leaving the prison in a two-vehicle convoy,” she said. “I was the driver of the second vehicle. After we exited the outer gate, an Afghan guard raised his AK-47 and began shooting into the first vehicle. He then turned toward my vehicle – only a couple yards from my front bumper – and started shooting into my windshield. “I think he aimed at my passenger first, because I had time to duck down to my left. This left my right shoulder exposed, which is where I was shot. My passenger was killed instantly. I don’t think he felt anything. I didn’t feel anything right away, either. I didn’t even know I’d been shot until I looked over at my arm and saw the blood. The first thing I thought was that I hoped I could still move my hand and arm.”

For the past week Briann January heard her name mentioned as one of the best female basketball players available for the WNBA draft. As in, first-round good.

Getting 15 minutes from Brad Whitley to sit in the sun and talk about his goals for the track season seemed easy. “Lucky” might be the more accurate description.

Rob Ryan experienced a cliché first-hand. The former Shadle Park and Washington State baseball player was in the Major Leagues three years after concluding his Cougars career.

SEATTLE – The Gonzaga Bulldogs were so close to Oklahoma City they could feel the dust on their shoes. But Pittsburgh executed just a little better down the stretch of a women’s basketball street brawl inside Bank of America Arena at the University of Washington to steal a trip to the Sweet 16 out of the Bulldogs’ hands.

SEATTLE – Can the Gonzaga women’s basketball team do outside what it did inside? How well the Bulldogs answer that question tonight at Hec Edmundson Pavilion could determine if they can reach the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament.

SEATTLE – For Gonzaga’s All-West Coast Conference performers Courtney Vandersloot and Vivian Frieson, playing in the NCAA tournament in Seattle is a double bonus. Vandersloot was a high school star at Kentwood and Frieson at Garfield.

SEATTLE – Ta’Shia Phillips was everything she was cracked up to be. Gonzaga’s Bulldogs were more.

SEATTLE – Gonzaga women’s basketball coach Kelly Graves laced ’em up with his team this week. Just how well the 6-foot-5 former New Mexico player performed could go a long way in determining how well the Bulldogs fare against 20th-ranked Xavier tonight in the first-round game of the women’s NCAA tournament in Bank of America Arena at Hec Edmundson Pavilion.

It doesn’t take a baby to make a mother. But Jami Bjorklund was always like that around her teammates on the Gonzaga women’s basketball team, so there wasn’t much of a change after she married Drew Schaefer last summer.

Watching the Gonzaga women’s basketball team, it’s easy to be wowed by Heather Bowman’s scoring and Courtney Vandersloot’s playmaking. Then there is Vivian Frieson.

Xavier and Gonzaga are similar at first glance, Jesuit schools of about 7,000 students that have good basketball teams. It just seems like Xavier, Gonzaga’s opponent in the first round of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament Saturday night in Seattle, is bigger.

Typical in the moments after the announcement of pairings for the NCAA tournament, members of the Gonzaga’s women’s team didn’t know much about their first-round opponent. “As far as Xavier, I know they’re a big-name school,” GU junior Heather Bowman said. “I don’t know a lot about them. It will be fun to learn about them and see how we match up.”

TACOMA – Kennedy was impressive – and impressed. The top-ranked Lancers from Burien completed a perfect season with a 50-43 win over Shadle Park in the championship game of the State 3A girls basketball tournament Saturday night in the Tacoma Dome.

TACOMA – It appeared that if Shadle Park was going to lose in the second round of the State 3A girls basketball tournament, it was going to be a freshman that beat them. Instead, it was a freshman who jump-started the Highlanders into the semifinals.