Mike Vlahovich

Youth aside, Central Valley junior soccer player Jay Vela has been one of the league's most prolific scorers over the past two years. Vela has scored in every Greater Spokane League match and shares the scoring lead with 10 goals, 13 overall.

When Lewis and Clark baseball coach Dexter Davis first coached Eric Barge after his freshman year, he saw a tall, slender athlete who could hit and throw. "I didn't need any more information," he said. "I liked the makeup."

The outcome of a Greater Spokane League baseball game billed as one between teams pitting good pitching against good hitting in truth was scarcely a product of either. Much of the scoring on both sides in Ferris' dramatic comeback 8-7 victory over Mt. Spokane came from the rubble of myriad walks, hit batsmen, errors and wild pitches.

Mt. Spokane's Cameron Joslyn, like his brother before him, is a late bloomer. You wouldn't know it by the stats he put up last year when the then 5-foot-11, 150-pound pitcher went 5-2 and had the Greater Spokane League's best earned run average at 0.57.

When Mead track athletes board their bus and head northeast following completion of Saturday's Richland jamboree, boys distance coach Pat Tyson will climb into his van and drive southeast. Tyson, for 19 years the wildly successful Panthers cross country coach, said Monday he is taking a leave of absence to become a volunteer distance coach of the Oregon Ducks track team.

TACOMA – The difference between third and sixth places at the State 4A girls basketball tournament between Lewis and Clark and University came down to a loose ball scramble between each team's senior star. Titan Jami Bjorklund was whistled for a foul with 6 seconds remaining in the game and Briann January made both free throws for a 47-45 LC victory in the fourth meeting between the team teams and final high school game between good friends.

TACOMA – University's hopes of a State 4A basketball championship went up in the smoke of a Snohomish 3-point shooting barrage. The Panthers made 10 of 22 shots from beyond the arc to hold off the Titans 58-52 and earn a date with Garfield in tonight's title game.

TACOMA – State basketball is a matter of survival of the fittest and the Lewis and Clark Tigers came out of their melee against Prairie a 40-37 victor and essentially in one piece – if you discount the tooth Ula Tauala left on the court courtesy of a Falcon elbow. It was a physical contest left largely to the players' devices and the Tigers shot abysmally as a result. But they survived to play at 7 tonight in a State 4A semifinal against Garfield and are assured their second state trophy in three years.

TACOMA – So far, so good for University and Lewis and Clark as they journey a State 4A girls basketball tournament highway fraught with potential roadblocks. On opening day in the Tacoma Dome, the U-Hi Titans dispatched Redmond 70-43, not surprising except perhaps by its margin. The LC Tigers, despite a shaky start common to tournament openers, handled outmanned Central Kitsap 55-43.