Locally: Gonzaga’s Emma Wolfram earns WCC Postgraduate Scholarship
Emma Wolfram of Gonzaga, who missed her senior basketball season with an injury, has been named the female recipient of the West Coast Conference Postgraduate Scholarship.
She is the fifth Bulldog to receive the award and the first since rower Naseeb Bhangal in 2014.
The male winner was Loyola Marymount soccer player John Bovill.
Wolfram carries a 3.96 cumulative GPA in her master’s program in organizational leadership and graduated Cum Laude with a bachelor’s in human physiology. A three-time member of the President’s List, she served as team captain as a senior and received the Gonzaga Leadership Award and was student-athlete advisory committee president in 2018.
Wolfram plans to use the scholarship to pursue a career in physical therapy upon completing her studies and is slated to enroll at the University of the Pacific this fall.
College scene
Johnny Sage is going to need an extra equipment bag to haul away the hardware he’s collected following his sophomore baseball season at Yakima Valley College.
The highlight for the Yaks’ outfielder from West Valley came when he was named to the 2018 American Baseball Coaches Association/Rawlings Pacific Association Division All-America first team that includes players from the Northwest Athletic Conference and California Community College Athletic Association.
Earlier he was named to the ABCA/Rawlings Pacific Association Northwest All-Region first team and was its Position Player of the Year, and was the NWAC Baseball Player of the Year after earning All-East Region MVP.
Sage, who led the Yaks to a second-place finish in the 2018 NWAC Championship Tournament, batted .390, fourth best in the NWAC, and led the league with 67 RBIs and 45 walks as he was frequently walked intentionally by opposing pitchers.
Yakima Valley sophomore infielder Tanner Parker from Ferris and Community Colleges of Spokane sophomore pitcher Nick Flesher were named to the Pacific Association Northwest All-Region second team.
• North Idaho College’s much-honored freshman pitcher Madi Mott was named the NWAC Softball Player of the Year.
The East Region MVP compiled a 29-1 record and led the league in wins. Her 2.08 ERA and 208 strikeouts were second best. Mott also created havoc for opposing pitchers, batting .432 with 15 home runs and 66 RBIs.
She was named to the NWAC NFCA All-America team and was the MVP of the NWAC Championship Tournament after leading NIC to the 2018 conference title.
• Jakobe Ford, Everett’s talented freshman from Shadle Park, shared the NWAC Male Track & Field Athlete of the Year award.
Ford became the first athlete to capture the triple crown in the jumping events at the NWAC Championships, winning the long jump (24 feet, 3/4 inches), high jump (6-4 3/4) and triple jump, breaking the 36-year-old record in the latter with a leap of 50-11 1/2. The old mark was 50-7 1/2.
He scored 30 points to share meet high-point honors with Olympic sophomore Colton Paller, a triple winner in the throws (discus, shot put and hammer), with whom he also shared the athlete of the year award.
• Joel Condreay, who graduated from Whitworth last month as an accounting major with a 3.90 GPA, has been chosen to the second team on the 2018 Division III Google Cloud Academic All-America baseball team as selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America.
A three-time All-District 8 academic selection, this is his first Academic All-America honor.
• Oklahoma State senior Vanessa Shippy from Lake City collected a third straight Google Cloud Academic All-America honor in softball, named to the Division I first team with a 3.91 GPA in finance/marketing. She was also a first-team choice in 2017 after being named to the third team in 2016.
• Washington State senior Emily Morrow, who rowed stroke for the Cougars as they finished 14th the NCAA Championships, collected a second 2018 Pac-12 All-Conference honor, this one bestowed by the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association.
The 2018 CRCA all-conference teams replace the previous all-region awards and makes recipients eligible for All-America teams.
• Morrow (3.55 GPA) and seven of her WSU teammates were named 2018 National Scholar-Athletes by the CRCA.
Seniors Ellie Burg (3.56) and Jenna Mangiagli (3.69), juniors Paige Danielson (4.0) and Taija Thompson (3.62) and sophomores Ivy Elling Quaintance (3.77), Renee Kemp (3.90) and Kamila Ondrackova (3.65) were also honored for maintaining cumulative GPAs of 3.5 or higher.
It is the third honor for Morrow and Mangiagli and the second for Danielson and Thompson.
• Devon McCornack, a junior from Moses Lake who rows on the WSU men’s crew in the school’s club program, was named to the Pac-12 All-Academic second team in rowing with a 3.54 GPA.
• Central Washington junior Corbin Carlton, a transfer from Community Colleges of Spokane, was selected the Men’s Newcomer of the Year in Great Northwest Athletic Conference track and field.
The Mead graduate finished fourth in the steeplechase and seventh in the 5,000 at the GNAC Championships. His time of 9:07.71 in the 3,000 steeplechase was 28th best in NCAA Division II and was an NCAA Championships provisional qualifying mark.
Praising Carlton’s distance double, CWU coach Kevin Adkisson noted, those “are both very challenging events.” Carlton was second in the 1,500 and third in the steeplechase at the NWAC Championships for CCS last year after earning a national honor during the season for running the top junior college time in the nation for the steeplechase, 8:59.10.
• Five area athletes each at Washington State and Washington were named to 2018 Pac-12 All-Academic teams in men’s and women’s track and field with GPAs of 3.0 or higher.
The WSU contingent is led by junior Kyler Little from Lake City, who was named to the men’s first team for the second straight year with a 4.0 GPA.
The other Cougars received honorable mention. Juniors Cameron Dean, Mead; Nick Johnson, Gonzaga Prep; and Paul Ryan, Logos of Moscow, Idaho, were on the men’s team. Junior Kaitlin Krouse was on the women’s. It’s the second award for Ryan, a first-team selection in 2017, and the first for the others.
Washington’s selections were all honorable mention, including seniors Andrew Gardner of Mead and Keith Williams of North Central, on the men’s team for the third time.
Khalil Winfrey, a UW sophomore from Rogers, was on the men’s team for the first time. The women’s team included seniors Mayson Douglass from Mead, honored for the second time, and Katie Wardsworth from Central Valley with her first.
• Senior track and field athletes Jeremy VanAssche and Paula Gil-Echevarria were named the Eastern Washington Scholar-Athletes of the Month for May.
VanAssche, who has a 3.24 GPA in exercise science, placed second in the 100m at the Big Sky Outdoor Championships with a time of 10.29 seconds, the fastest time in school history. He was also part of the 4x100 relay team that won the school’s first Big Sky championship in the event with a school-record time of 40.39.
Gil-Echevarria, who has a 3.73 GPA in health and fitness, earned All-Big Sky honors by placing third in the 3,000 steeplechase in 10:33.36 at the outdoor championships. She completed her collegiate career with a PR 10:16.73, third on EWU’s all-time list, at the NCAA West Preliminary Round, where she placed 27th.
• The Washington State volleyball team, coming off back-to-back appearances in the NCAA Tournament’s second round and with five starters and 10 letter winners returning, is listed 27th, two spots out of the VolleyMob.com Way-Too-Early 2018 Top 25 Power Rankings.
High school scene
St. George’s in 2B and Almira/Coulee-Hartline in 1B were named 2017-18 Scholastic Cup champions by the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association.
Saint George’s was the only school among the six classification champions to win the cup without winning an athletic state championship. But the Dragons were runners-up in both boys and girls soccer and boys basketball and earned major points in the classroom with academic state championships in boys soccer, choir, forensics and boys tennis.
That helped the Dragons compile 1,585 points to edge neighbor and defending champion Northwest Christian by 180 points.
Almira/Coulee-Hartline won state championships in football, baseball and softball to help propel it to the school’s second consecutive 1B Scholastic Cup. The Warriors’ football team also excelled in the classroom, picking up an academic state championship, as did boys basketball.
The other Scholastic Cup winners were Lynden Christian, 1A; Sehome, 2A; Interlake, 3A; and Camas, 4A.
Letters of intent
Eastern Washington women’s track & field: Maggie Nelson, Liberty/Community Colleges of Spokane; two-time NWAC javelin champion (2017, 2018), 2nd heptathlon in 2017, 4th in 2018.
Whitworth volleyball: Kaitlyn White, OSH/RSH, Central Valley; two-time All-GSL honorable mention; Saylor Anderson, S, Stanwood, Wash.; Eleanor Mason, L, Mill Creek, Wash.
Gonzaga men’s cross country/track: James Mwaura, Lincoln of Tacoma; State 3A cross country champion; Jaxon Mackie, Surrey, British Columbia; Matthew Roberts, Interlake of Bellevue, Washington; David Connell, Camas, Wash.
Carroll College men’s basketball and track & field: Shamrock Campbell, Ferris; PG, two-time first-team All-GSL in basketball; 2018 State 4A triple jump champion, five-time state medalist.