The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper The Spokesman-Review
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
Current Temperature
54°F
Current Conditions
Clear sky
View complete weather report

Color Scheme

Subscribe now

John Blanchette

This individual is no longer an employee with The Spokesman-Review.

All Stories

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

Blanchette: Karr ruling didn’t cause polar shift in NCAA world

LAS VEGAS – Lots happening here at the West Coast Conference basketball tournament. Kevin Pangos is trending. Rob Sacre is back insisting that Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s hate each other, despite no one else agreeing with him. The big logo sticker at center court of the Orleans Arena that caused players to go all Splashdown on Saturday night has been yanked up, a blow for safety over marketing.
Sports

Blanchette: Northwest Yeshiva adds diversity to State 1B

Even as the littlest tournament becomes smaller – fewer teams, lower enrollments – it gets bigger all the time. Sometimes that growth is attended by resistance and heartache. Sometimes that makes the ensuant twists and tweaks even more joyous.
Sports

Blanchette: GU’s wins come harder than in old days

Gonzaga’s student take-the-hate- out-of-hoops movement to curb any potential faith-baiting of the guests from Brigham Young on Thursday night was all fine and noble. Somebody needed to put some hoops in the hoops, however.
Sports

Next stop for U.S. boxing trio: China

Here’s the thing about the boxing trials that decide the U.S. Olympic team: They aren’t over even when they’re over. For Marlen Esparza, Claressa Shields and Queen Underwood, the road to London this summer now takes a detour through China.
Sports

Blanchette: Shields balances young age, veteran abilities

Sometimes she is a fighter beyond her years. And sometimes Claressa Shields is every bit a 16-year-old. “She likes to go to Wal-Mart and win those toys,” her trainer, Jason Crutchfield, laughed – and most of his recollections, descriptions and ruminations about his remarkable pupil are punctuated with a laugh. “She’s on that machine, trying to win a toy.
Sports

Queen Underwood advances to championship

As a woman more familiarly known as “Queen,” Quanitta Underwood truly grasps that uneasy-is-the-head business. She doesn’t yet wear the crown – she’s one victory away from that. But as the poster puncher for the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Women’s Boxing, the Seattle lightweight has been given most-favored status – and it hasn’t done her a bit of good yet.
Sports

Six-time champ Esparza comes through

If Marlen Esparza didn’t fully grasp before that she wears a big target, she did Tuesday night. The six-time national champion won her first actual bout at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Women’s Boxing, and decisively. But she did it in retreat, as a heavy underdog with just a couple of steady years of boxing behind her forced the issue for all four rounds.
Sports

Spotlight finds teen

The next big thing in women’s boxing? Turns out Claressa Shields is the big thing now. The 16-year-old middleweight from Flint, Mich., turned the first U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Women’s Boxing on end Monday night with a dominant performance in upsetting top-seeded Franchon Crews in a crackling highlight to the opening round.
Sports

Blanchette: Women’s boxing finally arrives

For the participants in the first U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Women’s Boxing, the view from Spokane rivals the one from atop Everest – with one cruel irony. “For most of them,” noted long-time advocate Christy Halbert, “their dreams will end at this event.”
Sports

Blanchette: Gonzaga showed its power in rematch

Game long over, a Gonzaga operative pushed a wheelchair through a ground-level corridor at the McCarthey Athletic Center and toward the court, where he encountered Randy Bennett – more resigned than cranky – walking off.