No. 1 Curlew Forfeits 3
Basketball/gymnastics
Curlew’s boys, ranked No. 1 among Class B teams in the latest Associated Press basketball poll, have forfeited three Panorama League games for using an ineligible player.
The ruling leaves the Cougars at 9-3 in league and 13-3 overall. Before the ruling, Curlew was the lone unbeaten team in the boys B ranks.
The forfeited games are against Cusick, Columbia and Wellpinit. Curlew easily won each game.
Curlew coach Steve Brown said the problem was a misunderstanding over using a junior varsity player for five quarters in one night. Curlew had asked for a rules interpretation, Brown said, with the desire of not running up the score against rivals.
Brown self-reported the rules violation. Curlew can still win the Panorama North Division by defeating Republic Feb. 7.
State B times altered
Don’t accuse State B basketball tournament organizers of ignoring the fans.
A letter from a concerned fan after last year’s boys and girls tourneys prompted a change in some of this year’s tourney times.
Friday’s opening-session games at the Arena will start 30 minutes earlier, beginning at 10:30 a.m. Saturday’s games, for places 3-8, will be 1 hour earlier, starting with the noon matchup for fifth and eighth.
The plan, said tournament director Clayton Dunn, is to decrease the time that fans must wait outside for Friday evening’s semifinals and Saturday evening’s championships.
The tourney will be March 4-7.
Titanic exploits at Sehome
University scored a season-best 167.95 points at last weekend’s Sehome Invitational, with gymnasts Alisa Brandle, Tara Hulbert and Vanessa Cordova matching or surpassing their best marks.
Brandle finished ninth in the all-around event with a 34.5, including a ninth-place 8.8 on the balance beam and a 9.05 in the floor exercise.
Hulbert (34.4) placed eighth on the vault (8.8) and scored 8.9 on floor and 8.6 on beam. Cordova (34.35) finished seventh on vault (8.9) and eighth on floor (9.15).
U-Hi’s Coleen Pierce placed 10th on the uneven bars (8.4), had 8.65s on beam and vault, and totaled 33.9.
Kacey Frederickson of Ferris scored 9.1 on floor and 8.6 on bars but had trouble on the beam. She finished with a 33.0.
Sehome scored in the mid-170s to win the event. U-Hi placed fourth.
Trout Lake draws probe
The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association will soon rule if Class B eighth-ranked Trout Lake (14-1) broke rules when 6-foot-10 Mark Gottschalk transferred this year from White Salmon.
Columbia Gorge League athletic directors met this week and discussed Gottschalk’s move to Trout Lake with his father. Gottschalk’s mother and sister reportedly remained in White Salmon. Trout Lake has been given five days to prove hardship to the WIAA or explain why the move didn’t go before an eligibility hearing.
Scary time for St. George’s
A suspected flu bout was something more serious for Miranda Routh-Corker, the Panorama League’s leading scorer.
Routh-Corker, cleared to play for St. George’s in last Friday’s game against Wellpinit, collapsed on the bench at game’s end. She was ushered to a cold shower and wrapped with cool towels, to protect against heat exhaustion.
Routh-Corker soon had breathing problems. She was taken to Deaconess Medical Center, where her temperature was measured at 104 degrees. The diagnosis was viral bronchitis, a condition that resembles a collapsed lung to the victim.
Around the courts
Ritzville lost its rebounding leader, Josh Whitman, to an ankle fracture last Friday. Whitman, the lone Broncos starter taller than 6-foot, was hurt in physical education class and is expected to need six weeks to heal. … LaCrosse-Washtucna boys coach Andy Stinson underwent an appendectomy last Sunday. He complained of pain while watching the Super Bowl with brother Mark, coach of the Tekoa-Oakesdale girls.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Chris Derrick Staff writer Correspondents Robert Milligan and Nathan Joyce contributed to this report.