7 Spokane-area schools win academic titles

Seven area high schools, including Mead and Ferris from the Greater Spokane League, won nine spring academic state championships, the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association announced.

Mead won the academic title in 4A boys tennis with a 3.832 grade-point average while Ferris was the 4A girls track and field champion with a 3.77 GPA.

Cusick and Clarkston were double winners. Cusick won in the 1B classification in baseball (3.449) and girls golf (3.822), and Clarkston in 2A boys tennis (3.773) and girls tennis (3.948).

Other area champions:

St. Michael’s, 1B softball, 3.50; St. George’s, 1B girls tennis, 3.731; and Pullman, 2A boys soccer, 3.611.

Basketball

Team St. Luke’s of Spokane had two upper-division finishes in the National Wheelchair Basketball Championships last month in Denver.

The varsity team placed 12th among the top 32 teams in its division. The prep team was ninth in a 20-team field.

•Austan Pierce of Ferris has been accepted at the University of Texas at Arlington to play basketball, Team St. Luke’s program coordinator Teresa Skinner announced.

“He’s the first player off Team St. Luke’s to go on to play wheelchair basketball at the collegiate level,” Skinner said.

College scene

Whitworth and Washington State had players selected to ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District VIII teams.

Dan Belet, a Whitworth senior outfielder with a 3.97 grade-point average, was named to the college division first team for the second time in his career. He was also selected as a sophomore in 2008.

Matt Fanelli, WSU senior designated hitter, was named to the university division first team with a 3.78 GPA.

•Basketball players Matt Bouldin and Heather Bowman, men’s tennis player Roman Dojcak and women’s soccer player Taylor Hall were honored at the Gonzaga Bulldog Club senior athletes social last week that paid tribute to 50 student-athletes.

Bouldin, the West Coast Conference player of the year and an Associated Press All-America honorable mention, and Bowman, the GU and WCC career scoring leader and a four-time All-WCC selection, were named the senior male and female athletes of the year, respectively.

Dojcak, who has a 3.88 GPA, received the senior male scholar-athlete of the year award and Hall, who has a 3.92 GPA, is the female senior scholar-athlete of the year.

•Sarah Frey and Brad Wall, a pair of highly ranked Eastern Washington 400-meter runners, have been selected the school’s scholar athletes of the month for April.

Frey, a senior communications studies/journalism major, has a 3.49 GPA. Wall is a sophomore with a 3.44 GPA. He has not declared a major.

•Corey Meyers, a sophomore golfer from Deer Park, is the Community Colleges of Spokane male scholar-athlete of the month for April.

Meyers, who plans to attend Whitworth, has been one of the leaders on a strong CCS men’s team and has a 3.98 GPA.

Amanda Edwards, a freshman pitcher-first baseman on the softball team, is the female choice. In a recent four-game stretch, she pitched four wins and batted .500 to raise her season average to .323. She has a 3.76 GPA.

•Former Washington State football players Kenny Alfred and Joe Eppele were named to the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame 2010 Hampshire Honor Society, the NFF announced.

To be eligible, student-athletes must be a starter or significant contributor in their last year of eligibility with a 3.2 cumulative GPA and meet all NCAA- mandated progress toward their degree.

Alfred, an English major, recently signed a free-agent contract with the Tennessee Titans. Eppele, a psychology major, was the second overall selection by the Toronto Argonauts in the Canadian Football League draft last Sunday.

•Two Central Washington seniors from the Spokane area, infielder Kevin Schneider from Mead and pitcher Michael McCanna from Chewelah, were named to the Great Northwest Athletic Conference baseball all-academic team.

Schneider has a 3.74 GPA and McCanna a 3.40 GPA, both in construction management.

•Three area athletes at Montana with grade-point averages of 3.2 or better were named to Big Sky Conference winter all-academic teams.

Katie Baker, a freshman from Coeur d’Alene Charter, was honored in women’s basketball, while Bryan DeFelice, a freshman from Mead, and Alex Shaw, a junior from Lewis and Clark, were selected in men’s indoor track and field.

•Whitworth, which won or shared titles in nine of 18 sports during the 2009-10 school year, won a third straight Northwest Conference McIlroy-Lewis All-Sports Trophy and its fourth in five years.

Hockey

Jason Greenwell of Spokane, a goalie who spent four seasons with the Spokane Braves before being traded to the Fernie Ghostriders in 2008, has committed to Norwich University in Vermont, his family announced.

Greenwell helped Fernie to the 2008 Kootenai International Junior Hockey League championship and this past season led the KIJHL with a 1.79 goals-against average while compiling a .930 save percentage as Fernie had a league-leading 41-7-1-1 record. Norwich won the 2010 NCAA Division III national championship.

Corrections

Rachel Bozlee’s name was inadvertently omitted last Sunday from the list of players on the Monster Energy 12-U girls basketball team that won its division in the 32nd annual Inland Empire Championships and AAU national qualifier tournament in Yakima.

•The schools for two men who will be inducted into the Washington Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame on June 12 were incorrect in the Locally column that ran April 25. Bill Elliott coached at Cashmere and Chuck Panerio coached at Ephrata. Additionally, Manuel Diaz was an official from Wenatchee.