Vince Grippi

For the second consecutive year, the Community Colleges of Spokane will be part of the NWAACC postseason baseball tournament, though it took the Sasquatch 11 innings to accomplish the feat. CCS opened the East Region playoffs last Friday with a hard-fought 3-1 loss to Big Bend, setting the tone for a weekend of low-scoring games.

The Mead Panthers are going to the State 4A softball tournament for the first time since 1998. The University Titans are going for the ninth consecutive year. Both earned the trip during the rain-delayed East Regional at Franklin Park on Monday, but they did it in different ways.

There can be a lot of unusual lineups thrown out on the field as the college baseball season winds down. But none are more unusual than the one Gonzaga University trotted out for a few innings at Avista Stadium last Tuesday.

Going into the District 8 4A softball playoffs, the Central Valley Bears were the fourth seed out of the American Division of the Greater Spokane League. In other words, one of the long shots.

Gonzaga Prep looked around for its new boys basketball coach and found him in one of its classrooms. Mike Haugen, who coached the Bullpups for 11 years, was named head coach Friday, replacing Ken Anderson, whose contract was not renewed after two years.

Records are meant to be broken, bones aren't. Bryan Winston is glad he's been able to do the former and, in the process, not also the latter.

Gonzaga got to play in Spokane after all. Though the Zags' 96-95 double-overtime loss to Arizona took place in Salt Lake City, an estimated 5,000 fans stuck around the Spokane Arena after Saturday's two NCAA Tournament games to root on GU. Arena management put the game on the big screen and on the concourse televisions, turned up the CBS sound and let Spokane live and die with every shot.

A famous couple decide to meet in a major city to get married. The newspapers get wind of it. Photographers and reporters stake out the couple's hotel and the county courthouse, hoping to ambush the love-struck couple. One photographer goes as far as hanging out the window of a neighboring hotel for an "intimate" picture. The couple decide not to run the gantlet and don't tie the knot. They never marry. Princess Di and Dodi Fayed in 1997? No, Howard Hughes and Katharine Hepburn in 1937.

Spokane School District 81 decides limiting middle and elementary school athletic teams to an elite few destroys the self-esteem of those who aren't included. The solution: institute a no-cut policy, give everyone an opportunity to be part of a team. Make everyone happy. Unmitigated malarkey. Another feel-good, liberal educational policy. Hopefully it is doomed to failure.