Kiblen Scholarship Gives Boost To EV Standout

Golf was a passion for former Valley teacher and coach Mitch Kiblen, but playing the game is not a prerequisite for winning the Mitchell J. Kiblen Memorial Scholarship.

This year’s recipient, Sasha Jackowich, doesn’t play golf, although several members of her family do, including her father, Don, a part-time greenskeeper at Indian Canyon Golf Course.

“Basically we were trying to get the kind of kid who would be a person Mitch was - well-rounded and community-oriented,” said Gary Mills, one of the award’s founders.

Jackowich certainly fits the description. She carried a near-perfect grade point average at East Valley High School and was involved in basketball, track, cross country and soccer. She also served as associated student body vice president at EV High, and was involved in many other school clubs and activities.

“My friends say if there’s a club, I’m in it,” she once said.

Among the EV High students who applied for the Kiblen scholarship, Jackowich was the most worthy, in the judgment of founders Mills, Joe Trembly and Herb Genteman.

“I didn’t know much about the history of the award,” Jackowich said. “It’s nice to know they have faith in me to represent well the name of someone they loved and cared about.”

She didn’t realize that the late educator, after whom the scholarship was named, taught at East Valley High, the school from which she recently graduated. Kiblen also coached basketball at East Valley before resigning after he suffered a heart attack in 1965.

After Kiblen died in 1990 at the age of 70, the trio of Mills, a counselor in the Central Valley School District, Genteman, owner of Sports Creel, and Trembly, a retired teacher, began the scholarship in his memory.

Kiblen, said Mills, “was an incredible human. Everybody loved Mitch. He was one of the finest human beings I ever met and defy anyone to say anything negative about him.”

Mills said Kiblen’s involvement with the Liberty Lake Golf Course Men’s Club likely lengthened his life by 10 years.

Jackowich said she will use the $500 stipend at Duke University in Durham, N.C., where she plans to enroll this fall.

“I’m really into science and medicine would be rewarding,” she said of her intended major. “But I’m also interested in government and business, even.”

She applied at six schools, including Harvard, but chose Duke for its academics and the fact that the Blue Devils are her favorite college basketball team. Also, her brother Burke, who was stationed with the Army in North Carolina, encouraged her to attend school there.

Mills said he is concerned that it will be difficult to fund the Kiblen scholarship in the future.

Chief fund-raiser for the scholarship is an annual golf tournament put on by the men’s clubs at MeadowWood and Liberty Lake golf courses. It’s one event in a full slate of activities and men’s clubs can no longer reserve a block of tee times from 7 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. each weekend as they could in the past.

Mills fears that changes in county policy may effect the direction of men’s clubs at the Valley courses and the memory of Mitch Kiblen may fade.

“My concern is that the scholarship may go away,” said Mills.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo