Local athletes earn monthly honors at CCS
Freshmen basketball players from Spokane are the Community Colleges of Spokane’s scholar-athletes of the month for January.
Ren Mallory from Lewis and Clark, the starting point guard on the women’s team, is the female choice.
Eric Beal from North Central, leading scorer on the men’s team, is the male selection.
Mallory, called a steady playmaker and floor leader, is averaging seven points, four rebounds, 3.5 assists and two steals per game while shooting 47 percent from the floor. She was chosen for all-tournament teams at Everett and the Bigfoot Crossover. She has a 3.4 grade-point average.
Beal is averaging just more than 16 points per game. Last weekend in an overtime loss to Yakima, he scored a career-high 37 points. He also leads the team in assists with 104 and in steals with 2.2 per game. He has a 3.25 GPA.
College scene
Jaime Lyon, a Pepperdine junior from Mt. Spokane, turned in two personal-best times in helping the Waves to a fourth-place finish in the 16-school Pacific Coast Swimming Conference Championships last weekend, Pepperdine’s seventh straight top-five finish.
Lyon placed 11th in the 400-yard individual medley with a personal-record 4 minutes, 42.69 seconds. She was 17th in the 200 butterfly with a PR 2:12.85.
•Four area athletes are among 29 from the University of Idaho who earned Western Athletic Conference All-Academic honors for the fall.
Kelsey James of Sandpoint was recognized in volleyball and Ian Chestnut of Ferris in men’s cross country. From women’s cross country were Alexandra Lee-Painter and Rachel Toldness, both of Moscow, Idaho.
•Whitworth was picked to finish second in softball and fourth in baseball in preseason Northwest Conference coaches’ polls.
The softball coaches selected three-time defending champion Linfield to finish ahead of Whitworth. George Fox, which has won or shared five straight titles, was the baseball coaches’ choice to place first.
Cycling
Bill Meisner of Spokane, who holds 24 Perimeter Cycling world records and climbed from 15th to No. 13 on the all-time list in 2006 by riding 707 miles last year, said he has ridden his last race.
Meisner said a bicycle accident while training in June, which required surgery to insert a steel plate and six screws to repair a broken clavicle, forced him to rethink his priorities.
In a release announcing his rankings – which included No. 1 in mountain perimeter riding for a fourth straight year – Meisner wrote: “Knowing when to stop at age 67 is difficult, but knowing not to continue is not only a gift but a case of contagious sanity.”
Golf
Jordan Knapp, a Clarkston High School senior, has signed a letter of intent to play for the Lewis-Clark State College women’s team in the fall, LCSC women’s coach Steve Tilden announced.
Knapp qualified for the Washington 3A tournament as both a sophomore and junior, placing in the top 30 last year. Besides her golf, Knapp is student body president at CHS.
Shooting
Two female members of the Spokane Junior Rifle Team have accepted athletic scholarships at Division I schools, Michael Furrer, SJRT assistant coach, announced.
Elisha LaFond, 18, a senior at Shadle Park High School, the reigning national junior women’s champion in air rifle, will attend the University of Nebraska, which is coached by former Olympic gold medalist Launi Meili of Cheney.
LaFond, who has been shooting since the age of 13, will shoot on the Huskers’ air and small bore rifle teams.
Cori Hawkins, 18, a senior at North Central, will attend the University of Mississippi and shoot on their small bore and air rifle teams.
A competitor on the regional scene since the age of 14, Hawkins recently represented Washington as part of the state’s three-position air rifle team.
Miscellaneous
The Mike Utley Foundation, named for the paralyzed former Washington State and Detroit Lions football player, announced it has received a $16,132 grant from NFL Charities.
Utley, paralyzed in 1991 during an NFL game against the Los Angeles Rams, started the foundation in January 1992 to raise money for research, rehabilitation and education for spinal cord injuries. It also provides motivational and emotional support for those living with such injuries.
Utley, in expressing his gratitude for the grant, was quoted as saying that a lot of things the foundation provides “are expensive and are often not covered by insurance companies.”