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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Locally: Sam Merriman, Sherriden May headline list of Idaho Hall of Fame inductees

Sherriden May, the leading rusher in Idaho Vandals football history, will be inducted into the Idaho Athletic Hall of Fame on April 14, 2018. (MULVANY / SR)
From staff reports

Former University of Idaho football greats Sam Merriman and Sherriden May and two former Silver Valley high school stars from the 1950s and ’60s will be inducted into the Idaho Athletic Hall of Fame during the 56th North Idaho Sports Award Banquet on April 14 at the Best Western Plus Coeur d’Alene Inn.

Denny Almquist from Mullan and John Shelt from Kellogg will also be enshrined, and northern Idaho high school and college athletes, coaches and teams who excelled during the spring and fall of 2017 and the winter of 2017-18 will be honored.

Sam Merriman (1979-83): The linebacker played his first two seasons under coach Jerry Davitch and his final two under Dennis Erickson. A four-year starter, he led the team in tackles his final three seasons, with his four-year total of 519 still standing as the most in school history.

He was a three-time All-Big Sky Conference selection, earning first-team as a senior, and capped his college career by playing in the East-West Shrine Game. He was drafted by the Seattle Seahawks in the seventh round in 1983 and played five seasons, standing out on special teams. His career was ended by a knee injury in the second preseason game of his sixth season.

Sherridan May (1991-94): The running back is the school’s second all-time leading rusher with 3,748 yards. His 113.6-yards-per-game is the best in UI history by more than 16 yards. He is one of just seven Vandals to earn at least three first-team all-conference honors.

May went undrafted by the NFL but signed as a free-agent with the New York Jets, where he played in five games his rookie season and eight games the following season. After leaving the NFL, he played a season of semi-pro ball in the Puget Sound area and now lives in Tacoma.

Denny Almquist: From Mullan in the late ‘50s, he walked on at the University of Idaho and played three varsity seasons of football for Dee Andros as an offensive guard and defensive tackle, earning All-Coast honors as a senior.

Known as Swede, he was selected in the 11th round of the NFL draft by San Francisco, but was released and picked up by Saskatchewan in the middle of the CFL season. He played there for a year before returning to UI to finish his education.

Almquist started a coaching career as an assistant in football, basketball and golf in 1966 at Wallace High, spawning a 44-year teaching and coaching career in Idaho and Montana, winning numerous conference and state championships along the way.

John Shelt: A four-sport standout at Kellogg before graduating in ’63, Shelt attracted the attention of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who offered him a spot on their Class A farm team in Lewiston.

He attended Idaho on a football scholarship, playing four seasons and leaving as the second leading tackler in school history. Following college, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army and spent 13 months in Korea as a tank platoon leader during the Vietnam War. He eventually moved to Kennewick and became active in youth baseball.

Former Seattle Seahawks great Jim Zorn will be the featured speaker at the banquet.

Tickets can be purchased online at idahoathletichalloffame.org/banquet/ or at the Best Western Plus Coeur d’Alene Inn. Tickets are $25 for adults, $15 for children 12 and under.

Info: Rick Rasmussen at rrasmussen@nshinc.com or (208) 699-7495.

Basketball

Six men with a combined total of 206 years of officiating formed the inaugural class of the Spokane Basketball Officials Hall of Fame, which was inducted last weekend at the organization’s first awards banquet in more than a dozen years.

Chuck Filippini, who got his start as a high school junior at North Central in 1970, is the most experienced of the group with 45 years.

Filippini, who retired last year as a teacher at NC and is now the SBO assigner, said then-NC athletic director Carl Schultz approached him in the hallway one day and asked, “how’d you like to make $10?” Filippini said sure, and headed to Willard Elementary to officiate a sixth-grade basketball game.

Two of the players, he recalled, were Mike and Tim Peterson, sons of former SBO official and a Big Sky Conference Hall of Fame football official, the late Denny Peterson. Mike and Tim would later become SBO officials. In fact, Tim is still active.

“That was my first game,” Filppini said. “My last game was a playoff game last year at West Valley.”

Joining him in the SBO shrine are Dan Mencke, 40 years; Steve Ayers, 33; Bill Brannon, 32; Brad Bettman, 28; and Pat Martin, 28.

Joel Murphy received the association’s Eric Fox Official of the Year Golden Whistle Award.

Other awards: New to 3-Person Crew of the Year: Brenden Duncan, Justin Pope, Kellen Sturdivan. Rookie of the Year: Pope, Sturdivan, Johnny Whitmore. Apprentice of the Year: Sabrina Earle, August Weil. Go-to Crew: Dan Adams, Spencer Hofsteee, John Rupe. Varsity Crew of the Year: Joel Murphy, Geoff Asan, Jim Jacobson. Most Improved: Terryance Duke, Deylin Peone.

Bowling

The kids stole the show at the Junior Bowlers Tour’s season-ending fun tournament last Sunday at Valley Bowl.

Thirteen-year-olds Kyle Groves, who averaged 197 during the season and was sixth in the final standings, and Michael Bushyeager, in just his second JBT, finished off a hot day with a 416-410 win over leading qualifiers Wyatt Rosenau and Makayla Hoover for the championship.

It was the rubber match between the teams, which had split four earlier meetings.

Season champion Grace Martin and Spencer Au, in his first JBT, finished third; brothers Brendan and Cameron Haight were fourth; and Mason Georgeadis and Nathan Duncan were fifth.

Brendan Haight had the day’s high average, a 211; Groves averaged 204; Hoover led the girls with a 254 game and 202 average; and Colby Thomen rolled a 258 for high game.

College scene

Max McCullough of Post Falls capped an outstanding sophomore season at Eastern Oregon by being named to the NAIA Division II Men’s Basketball All-America third team.

The 5-foot-11 guard averaged a Cascade Collegiate Conference-best 22.2 points per game while playing 29 minutes a game and earning first-team All-CCC honors.

The two-time Inland Empire League MVP at Post Falls also averaged 3.2 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 1.3 steals a game and shot 49 percent from the field, 35.8 percent from 3-point range and 88.7 percent on free throws, among the best averages nationally in the NAIA.

Jaya Allen from Shadle Park, a freshman at Yavapai College in Prescott, Arizona, was named Arizona Community College Athletic Conference Division I Softball Pitcher of the Week for a third time this season after she pitched two one-hit shutout victories the week ending March 5. Allen has a 10-3 record and 2.30 ERA in 19 games.

Madelyn Carlson, a Whitworth freshman from Ravensdale, Washington, was named the Northwest Conference Softball Pitcher of the Week for the week of March 5-11 after she pitched three complete games, one a shutout, with a 1.67 ERA and an average of three strikeouts per seven innings. The Pirates won two of her three games.

• Eastern Washington’s Jeremy Field, a junior from France, earned his first Big Sky Player of the Week award in men’s tennis following an unbeaten weekend in which he went 2-0 in both No. 2 singles and No. 2 doubles. He’s a transfer from Morgan State, where he was first-team all-conference last year.

Katie Ochoa, a Whitworth senior from University, was NWC Women’s Golfer of the Week for the week of Feb. 26-March 4 after she shot a closing 5-over 77 to tie teammate Maggie Peters for first place at 16-over 160 as the Pirates won the PLU Spring Invitational.

• Four players from Washington State, led by senior Pinelopi Pavlopoulou, were named to Pac-12 All-Academic teams in women’s basketball with grade-point averages of 3.0 or above.

It was the third award of Pavlopoulou’s career, the second straight on the first team. Receiving honorable mention were juniors Maria Kostourkova and Alexys Swedlund, both for the second time, and redshirt junior Louise Brown.

Jake Love, a senior at Corban University in Salem from West Valley and Community Colleges of Spokane, and Matt Hillman, a senior at Northwestern University in Orange City, Iowa, from Post Falls, were named 2018 Daktronics-NAIA Division II Men’s Basketball Scholar-Athletes with GPAs of 3.5 or above. It was the second honor for Hillman.

Hockey

A record 27 former Spokane Chiefs are part of a larger record 382 Western Hockey League graduate players awarded WHL Scholarships for the 2017-18 academic year.

Twenty of the former Chiefs are continuing their hockey careers at the collegiate level, including three whose teams competed for the Canadian collegiate championship – Jason Fram (University of Alberta), Wyatt Johnson (University of Saskatchewan) and Keanu Yamamoto from Mead (McGill University).

The other former Chiefs and their schools, with those still playing denoted by an asterisk:

Todd Fiddler, University of Alberta; *Garret Hughson, University of Lethbridge; *Jeff Rayman, Lethbridge; Reid Gow, University of Manitoba; *Connor Chartier, Mount Royal (Calgary); Jacob Cardiff, University of Regina; *Tyson Predinchuk, Regina; *Tyler King, Regina; Eric Williams, Simon Fraser.

*Luke Harrison, University of Calgary; *Wyatt Johnson, University of Saskatchewan; *Jackson Playfair, Dalhousie University (Nova Scotia); *Calder Brooks, St. Mary’s University (Nova Scotia); *Kolten Olynek, University of Western Ontario; Marcus Messier, University of Windsor; *Alex Mowbray, York University; *Devon McAndrews, NAIT (Edmonton).

*Matthew Sozakski, Carleton University (Ottawa, Ontario); *Riley Whittingham, University of Prince Edward Island; *Markson Bechtold, University of Waterloo; *Trevor Martin, Waterloo; Trent Huitema, College of the Rockies (Cranbrook); Tyson Verheist, Lethbridge College; Blair Oneschuk, SAIT Polytechnic (Calgary); Jake Toporowski, Scott Community College (Iowa).