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Mike Vlahovich

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All Stories

Sports

Success no quirk

When describing Mt. Spokane’s volleyball style and reason for its team success, coach John Reid throws out the term “quirkiness.” Reid said he prefers having players who play more than one sport – hence, the Wildcats tend to be an eclectic mix.
Sports

District meet troublesome for GSL cross country

Central Valley’s girls cross country team won its third straight league championship with a victory over Mead last week. But the triumph only serves to show how complicated things are these days for Greater Spokane League 4A runners. “It’s almost to the point where it’s harder to qualify for regionals than state,” Lewis and Clark coach Mark Vandine said prior to the start of the season.
Sports

Nail-biters shuffle GSL

A football game befitting unbeaten Greater Spokane League teams Ferris and Central Valley was filled with big plays on both sides of the ball. The one most pivotal was reserved for a sophomore.
Sports

G-Prep rolls past Mead

There’s something about the second quarter for Gonzaga Prep’s football team. For the second straight week, the Bullpups broke through for four second-quarter touchdowns after being held scoreless in the first period.
Sports

Bunch of Bears earn share of title

There’s something to be said about togetherness. Seven runners from Central Valley’s girls team roared home in a pack Wednesday afternoon, seven runners separated by 37 seconds, to produce a share of their third straight Greater Spokane League championship.
Sports

Central Valley, Ferris coaches size up showdown

Central Valley has been improving weekly and Ferris keeps on winning. The unbeaten football teams battle for first place in the Greater Spokane League at CV at 7 p.m. Friday. Both are 6-0 overall, 5-0 in league and the winner gets a boost in the decisive final three weeks that determine the postseason fate of the league’s five 4A schools.
Sports

McLachlan gets opponent’s best wishes

At Deer Park’s home cross country match Tuesday, the unbeaten girls team dedicated the meet to Jim McLachlan, the coach of their opponent, West Valley. How often does a team in the heat of a league title chase do that for a foe?
Sports

Home? Road? A tossup in GNL

Home field advantage? It appears there is no such thing in Great Northern League football. Teams have gone 7-5 on the road in league and 5-7 at home, a veritable push. “The league’s pretty good across the board,” Cheney coach Jason Williams said. “On a given week any team can win.”
Sports

Ole! Tigers on top

Lewis and Clark’s 2-0 Greater Spokane League girls soccer victory at Gonzaga Prep on Friday afternoon may have been, in the words of Tigers coach Casey Curtis, “just one of the steps in the journey,” but it was a big step nonetheless. The victory was the sixth straight for LC and left the Tigers alone in first place heading into the final two weeks of the GSL season.
Sports

Tigers claw out a victory

Stingy defense took center stage when Lewis and Clark and Mt. Spokane squared off Thursday night in a Greater Spokane League football game important to both. It seemed inevitable, then, that the team that got the final break would prevail.
Sports

Long on talent

Before Travis Long became the imposing 6-foot-4, 235-pound two-sport athletic presence he is at Gonzaga Prep, Bullpups coaches were well aware of him. “We saw something way before he came here,” football coach Dave McKenna said.
Sports

NC makes big strides

On the face of it, North Central’s cross country victory over Mead in a Greater Spokane League meet Wednesday between unbeaten boys teams was impressive both in the disparity of score and apparent ease of accomplishment. Easy it wasn’t, insisted four senior veterans, whose 1-2-3 and seventh-place finishes helped produce a 17-41 triumph that kept NC on track for a second straight league title.
Sports

GSL volleyball unbeatens Mead, LC face off tonight

Two early season non-counting volleyball meetings between Mead and Lewis and Clark turned out to be a wash. The Tigers won during a jamboree; the Panthers, in five sets, captured their non-league contest.
Sports

GSL volleyball unbeatens meet tonight

Two early season non-counting volleyball meetings between Mead and Lewis and Clark turned out to be a wash. The Tigers won during a jamboree; the Panthers, in five sets, captured their non-league contest.
Sports

Mead shuts down EV

Mead football rained on East Valley’s homecoming celebration Friday night, when what began as a track meet, then settled into a slugfest, got out of hand in the second half. The score was just 14-7 at intermission, but the Panthers scored twice in each of the final two quarters in a dominant 41-7 Greater Spokane League football victory that improved them to 3-2 for the season.
Sports

Balance leads to win

When you think spread offense, the tendency is to think pass, and Thursday night’s Greater Spokane League football game at Albi Stadium between shotgun teams Mt. Spokane and University certainly had plenty. But Mt. Spokane’s Wildcats have been remarkably balanced run versus pass this year and it was such balance that produced a quick start and ultimately a 24-14 victory over the Titans.
Sports

Colville’s win worthy of top-notch rivalry

Details were sketchy last Friday night on Colville’s 21-20 victory in Pullman in a game between two of the Great Northern League’s premier football programs. It was as thrilling as the final score suggests, as a blocked field goal in the waning seconds of the game preserved the Indians’ victory.
Sports

Mead stops G-Prep in overtime

While watching the Mead-Gonzaga Prep Greater Spokane League soccer match unfold on Wednesday, Mead athletic director and former coach Dick Cullen recited a favorite aphorism. “The first five minutes and the last five minutes,” said Cullen of his old coaching mantra with the Panthers. “That’s when goals are scored.”
Sports

Youth football program pays off for GSL

A decade after the founding of Grid Kids tackle football in 1998, a Spokane team won the State 4A football championship. Coincidence? Perhaps, but when I was talking to Joe Roberts about his son Aaron for my prep feature story last week, we discussed whether there was any correlation. The evidence suggests so, because Grid Kids is where many in the graduating class of 2008 and beyond got their football start.
Sports

Surprises aplenty in GSL and Basin

What a difference a week makes in Greater Spokane League football. Shadle Park defeated East Valley two games ago in double overtime. Last week, the Knights beat Lewis and Clark 23-3 and that Shadle lost at Central Valley wasn’t as surpising as the margin of victory.
Sports

Making a statement

Gonzaga Prep spent the better part of the game defending its red zone against visiting Lake City in their non-league football game Friday night. And for the most part, the Bullpups did an admirable job. But they saved the best for last when senior defensive back Daniel McCanna somehow fended off burly Timberlake tight end Billey Sanders and pulled down a one-handed interception in the end zone to preserve the Bullpups’ 21-13 win.
Sports

Knights rule the night

East Valley made one thing perfectly clear during Thursday night football at Albi Stadium. No one can take anything for granted in this year’s Greater Spokane League.
Sports

Growing into star

When a small senior class created an issue of depth in Jim Sharkey’s first year as coach of Ferris football, he enlisted the services of a 135-pound sophomore. Thus began the career of Aaron Roberts, which has come to full flower over the past three seasons.
Sports

Miller sees prep world from other side

John Miller now sees things from the other side as a new assistant executive director of the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (and a rare hire from within the state school system). “In the past it was always ‘they,’ ” Miller said via a telephone conversation from his offices in Renton. “They is ‘me’ now.”