Locally

Gonzaga Prep grad Miller receives national recognition in football

Marcus Miller is used to scoring points and being in the spotlight for the Carroll College football team, but the sophomore from Gonzaga Prep had a day to remember Oct. 29 as the Saints remained unbeaten with a 45-0 win over Montana-Western.

Miller, who highlighted and capped his freshman season by kicking the game-winning field goal in the NAIA national championship game with 20 seconds left, scored a third of the Saints’ points in the win over Montana-Western.

Besides his normal kicking duties, in which he hit his only field-goal attempt and was 6 for 6 on extra points, Miller blocked a punt in the first quarter and fell on the ball in the end zone for a touchdown.

He also had eight kickoffs for 464 yards, and as a defensive back, intercepted a pass.

For all that, Miller was named the naiafootball.net national special teams player of the week along with the same honor from the Frontier Conference.

Miller, who scored 57 points as a freshman, ran his 2005 total to 58 with the big day.

Bowling

Josh Schmehl started hot and finished strongly to win the Junior Bowlers Tour stop at Lake Bowl in Moses Lake on Oct. 23.

Schmehl, who led the qualifying in the first four-game block with a 932 series, was passed by a couple of bowlers in the second four-game set despite an 865, and went into the five-man finals in third place.

From there, he won three matches to finish first, defeating top qualifier Daniel Seifert 215-214 on the last ball to capture the title.

Todd Benner finished third, Matt Descoteaux fourth and Justin Johnson fifth. Evan Nash had high game, a 279. Lacey Kerr led the girls with a 219.

The next JBT is Nov. 20 at Players & Spectators.

College scene

Three Whitworth College men’s soccer players have been named to the ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District VIII College Division first team.

Trevor Osborne, a senior defender from Seattle with a 3.71 grade-point average in business management; Adam Loeffler, a junior defender from White Center, Wash., with a 3.72 GPA in physics; and Chris Johnson, a senior forward from St. George’s School with a 3.59 GPA in business management, give Whitworth a quarter of the players on the 11-man team.

•Washington State and Eastern Washington each had two players on the ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District VIII women’s soccer teams.

WSU placed Ashley Lara, a senior from Las Cruces, N.M., on the University Division first team and Alix Rustrum, a senior from Wilsonville, Ore., on the second. EWU’s selections were Jennie Summers, a senior from Central Valley, on the second team and Beth Russell, a senior from Olympia, on the third.

Named to the College Division first team was Hillary Chisholm, a Whitman College senior defender from Lake City of Coeur d’Alene. Chisholm, who has a 3.90 GPA in art history and visual studies, made the team for a second straight year.

•Three former Greater Spokane League athletes have been named to the Great Northwest Athletic Conference academic all-star team in women’s soccer.

Leading the trio is Northwest Nazarene goalkeeper Amanda Merrell from Mead, one of three sophomores with perfect 4.0 GPAs. She’s majoring in biology.

Chrissy Wohl, a Western Washington senior midfielder from Lewis and Clark with a 3.66 GPA in economics and environmental studies, was named for the third straight year. Kara Hamby, a Seattle Pacific sophomore midfielder from Mead with a 3.32 GPA in biology, was named for the first time.

•Sara Fairburn, who averaged 13 points and eight rebounds a game last season as a senior at Northwest Christian, is slated to start for the Simpson University women’s basketball team, which plays in a tournament this weekend on its campus in Redding, Calif.

•Nicolette Wittwer, a sophomore volleyball player from Mead, and Kevin Blount, a sophomore on the men’s cross country team from Eisenhower of Yakima, have been named by Community Colleges of Spokane to NWAACC fall all-academic teams.

Wittwer has a 3.34 GPA and Blount a 3.33 GPA.