Sports in brief: Whitworth star gets extra year
Fooball: Whitworth University All-American running back Adam Anderson will return to play for the Pirates for another season after having been granted a medical hardship waiver from the NCAA, the school announced.
“We are excited that Adam has been granted another year of eligibility,” Whitworth head coach John Tully said.
“Having his leadership, work ethic and ability back for this coming season greatly enhances our team’s chances to make another run at the league championship and participate in the national playoffs.”
Anderson, of Elk, Wash. (Riverside HS), played in only one full game in 2009.
He suffered a severe ankle sprain on the opening kickoff of Whitworth’s second game of the season, attempted to return in the fifth game of the year, but re-sprained the ankle and was done for the rest of the season.
Anderson is a two-time Northwest Conference Offensive Player of the Year and was a 2008 D3football.com second-team All-American after leading Division III schools in all-purpose yards per game at 243.8 and was second in the nation in scoring average (16.89 points per game).
Anderson holds Whitworth school records for single season all-purpose yards (2,194 in 2008), single-season touchdowns (25 in 2008) and single-season total points (152 in 2008).
He is also Whitworth’s all-time record holder for career touchdowns with 38 in just over two seasons.
Three vaulters better record
Track and field: One of the University of Idaho’s oldest track and field records was broken Saturday at the WSU Open meet at Pullman when three different Vandals surpassed the school mark in the indoor pole vault with three successive jumps at 16 feet, 83/4 inches.
The old record of 16-81/4 was set by Steve Ott in 1985.
Seniors Lucas Pope and Mike Carpenter and sophomore Jeremy Klas ended Ott’s reign at 25 years.
“(The record) has been evading us for a couple years and it seemed like indoors, we just couldn’t get our stuff together,” Carpenter said.
“Today, we finally got it.”
Pope cleared it first with ease, followed by Carpenter and capped off by Klas.
Carpenter competed unattached, so officially, only Pope and Klas will go into the record book.