Sunday locals: Whitworth track athletes honored
Three Whitworth track and field athletes have been named to the Capital One Academic All-America Track & Field Team after standout performances in June at the NCAA Division III outdoor championships.
Seniors Jonathan Hoff and Peter Delap were named to the men’s first team while sophomore Dakota Kliamovich, of Liberty Lake, was named to the women’s squad.
Kliamovich was carrying a 4.0 GPA through the January term and is a biology and psychology double major.
She became an All-American in the women’s hammer with a sixth-place finish at the championships. This past year, she set a school record in the hammer five times with the last being a throw of 179 feet, 11 inches.
Hoff was named to the all-academic team for the second straight year. The Napa, California, native had a 3.93 GPA through January and graduated with a degree in engineering physics. He became an All-American with a sixth-place finish in the 110-meter hurdles at the championships after having won conference titles in the 110 hurdles and long jump.
Delap had a 3.84 GPA through January and graduated with a degree in marketing. The Portland native became an All-American with a fourth-place finish in the decathlon at the championships. He also was the conference champion in the decathlon and high jump and was named the Northwest Conference Championship’s Male Field Athlete of the Year.
• A pair of business administration graduate students at Eastern Washington have been selected as recipients of Big Sky Conference Scholar-Athlete Awards for the 2013-14 school year.
Football player Ashton Miller, of Vancouver, Washington, and volleyball player Ashley Wright, of Leavenworth, Washington, received the honors.
Miller has completed his master’s in business administration with a 3.74 GPA. Wright is completing her work on her MBA and is carrying a 3.85 GPA.
Miller injured his Achilles tendon in 2011 but earned first-team All-America and All-Big Sky Conference honors in the 2013 season.
Wright was a four-time member of the Big Sky Conference All-Academic team and played in 116 matches in her career.
• Two Gonzaga golfers have been named to the Women’s Golf Coaches Association All-American Scholars team.
Alice Kim, a senior next year, and Angela De Villa, who will be a junior, were named to the team, which recognized 664 women collegiate golfers in NCAA Divisions I, II and III.
It’s the second year that De Villa, a native of Taguig, Philippines, has been named to the team. She averaged 78.25 strokes per round this season. The biology major has a 3.50 GPA.
Kim, of Honolulu, carried a 3.51 GPA in sport management. She became the second Bulldog to win a West Coast Conference championship and helped Gonzaga to a second-place finish in conference. The team also earned its second straight berth to the NCAA regionals.
Kim finished the season with a 74.72 stroke average.
Letters of intent
Emma Keenan, a two-year basketball starter and four-year letterman at Lewis and Clark, has signed to play with Cal State Monterey Bay, a NCAA Division II school.
Coaching
Gonzaga announced that it has named Derek Siddiqui as an assistant to head tennis coach Peter MacDonald.
Siddiqui was a two-time All-Mountain West Conference men’s tennis singles selection out of San Diego State. He’s a native of Long Beach, California. Following graduation in 2013, Siddiqui has been working as a volunteer coach at SDSU.
• North Idaho College announced this week that golf coach Derrick Thompson will be leaving to become coach at Iowa Western Community College.
Thompson led the NIC’s golf team to a No. 7 ranking in the NJCAA final national poll and a 15th-place finish in the NJCAA national tournament.
In other Cardinal coaching news, NIC hired Thane Jackson as an assistant coach for the men’s basketball team. He fills the position held by Corey Symons, who is now head coach.