John Blanchette

When is the counterintuitive simply crazy? Jason Drake and Mark Macdonald, assistants to Washington State track coach Rick Sloan, spent a semester or so kicking around the notion in 2006. That year was a forgettable low point for the Cougars, who had managed less than 80 points from the men’s and women’s teams combined at the Pacific-10 Conference championships – and here were Drake and Macdonald, toying with taking hurdler Sara Trané, the women’s top returning placer on the track, and turning her into … a distance runner?

Bobsledders from Jamaica are now an Olympic cliche, but the initial silly incongruity sold a lot of T-shirts. You’re not supposed to find hockey players from Huntington Beach or swimmers from Senegal or honest men in Congress, but occasionally you do.

Big breakthroughs require big explanations, right? Slash seconds off a best time or make a quantum leap in, well, your leap and there must be some magic technical or training twist to reconcile it. Or not.

SEATTLE – In the bullpen, Carlos Silva was going through his pregame warmup, doing his best to block out the hubbub of the Opening Day at Safeco Field – the introductions, the fireworks, the red-carpet run his teammates were making out of the tunnel in right field. “Then they announced, ‘Ken Griffey Jr.,’ ” he said, “and I had to stop just to watch.”

“Guess what? I’ve got a fever – and the only prescription is …” – Famed producer Bruce Dickinson

Nowhere does the notion of team get reshaped and diversified more than at the Community Colleges of Spokane. Take the track meet the Sasquatch are staging today at Spokane Falls – WAOR II, the second installment of a Washington vs. Oregon brainstorm of CCS coach Larry Beatty. The Sasquatch have enlisted area friends Eastern Washington, Central Washington and Whitworth for a scoring affair against Portland State, Eastern Oregon, Linfield and Lane – spanning every level of collegiate competition from community colleges to NCAA Division I.

If the modern athlete lives to prove his doubters wrong, then the Spokane Chiefs have us right where they want us. Forty-eight hours ago they were down, disrespected and left for dead.

John Stockton completed a remarkable journey Monday – from the sometimes vicious driveway games with his brother Steve at the family’s Spokane home on North Superior to the Basketball Hall of Fame. The 47-year-old Spokane native was part of a five-person Hall of Fame class announced in Detroit, site of the NCAA men’s Final Four, which included another slightly known basketball contemporary: Michael Jordan.

John Stockton completed a remarkable journey Monday – from the sometimes vicious driveway games with his brother Steve at the family's Spokane home on North Superior to the Basketball Hall of Fame.