Locally: Spokane’s Lexie Hull, Lacie Hull honored for work on, off court
Another accolade for Spokane’s Hull twins, Lexie and Lacie.
The Central Valley graduates, juniors on Sanford’s national championship women’s basketball team, have been named to the College Sports Information Directors of America 2020-21 Division I Academic All-District 8 Women’s Basketball First Team.
The twins both have 3.92 GPAs, Lexie majoring in management science/engineering and Lacie in product design. Lexie was on the 2019-20 all-district first team and both are members of the Pac-12 academic honor roll.
The honor recognizes the nation’s top student-athletes for their combined performances on the court and in the classroom. First-team honorees are eligible for selection to the CoSIDA Academic All-America team that will be announced later this month. District 8 includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Canada.
Basketball
Tanner McCliment-Call, a 6-foot-3 sophomore guard from Post Falls, who is among the Community Colleges of Spokane’s scoring and rebounding leaders, has signed a letter of intent with Montana State University-Northern in Havre.
The Lights’ announcement said that after a season-ending injury last season, McCliment-Call is averaging about 20 points and nine rebounds a game this season while shooting 50% from 3-point range and 51% from the field.
College scene
For more than 80 years, Washington State has recognized 10 of the top seniors in each graduating class who represent the highest standards in specific aspects of the college experience, including academics, athletics, campus involvement, community service and visual and performing arts.
This year, three athletes are on the list – football’s Dallas Hobbs and track and field’s Samantha King-Shaw and Charisma Taylor. Hobbs and Taylor received their award in the Athletics category, while King-Shaw was the female recipient for the Academics category.
•Vernice Keyes’ 198-foot, 2-inch hammer throw at the OSU High Performance Meet on April 30 in Corvallis, Oregon, earned the Eastern Washington sophomore Big Sky Conference women’s field athlete of the week honors.
The top mark in the Big Sky this season, a career-best for Keyes and third in program history, ranks 64th in the nation and 28th in the NCAA West Region.
• Big Sky men’s field athlete of the week on May 3 for a second straight week was Idaho senior Zach Short following a season-best shot put of 64 feet, ¼ inch at the OSU meet. His winning toss is tops in the Big Sky, 10th in the West and 17th in the nation.
• Justin Roosma set the Eastern Washington program record in the men’s 3,000-meter steeplechase when the sophomore clocked 8 minutes, 54.69 seconds with a sixth-place finish in the OSU meet. The old mark of 8:56.31 was set in 2006.
• Area athletes collected two Great Northwest Athletic Conference weekly awards on May 3 for their performances the previous week.
Seth Kuykendall, a Western Oregon RHP from Gonzaga Prep and Yakima Valley College, was the baseball pitcher of the week for his complete-game, 10-1 win over Montana State Billings. He allowed four hits with one walk and struck out seven to improve his record to 5-2.
Scout Cai’s GNAC-record 13-foot, 3-nch pole vault at the Buc Scoring Meet in Spokane earned the Seattle Pacific senior from Colfax women’s field athlete honors. She’s won the event in all nine competitions she’s entered this season.
• Gonzaga junior Kristen Garcia broke her own program record in the women’s 5,000 and redshirt senior Peter Hogan broke the men’s program’s 10,000 record, both on April 30 at the OSU meet.
Garcia timed 16 minutes, 4.49 seconds to better her month-old mark of 16:10.72. Hogan’s time of 28:53.70 surpassed the 29:10.39 of James Mwaura, who is now a junior, in 2019.
• Jaya Allen, a Dickinson State (North Dakota) junior from Shadle Park, pitched the Blue Hawks to a 4-3 victory over Valley City State (N.D.) in the championship game of the North Star Athletic Association softball tournament Saturday in Bellevue, Nebraska.
Allen pitched seven innings, allowing nine hits while striking out eight and walking one, as Dickinson qualified for the NAIA national tournament May 17-19.
• Maddy Thomas, Whitworth’s junior catcher, was named Northwest Conference softball position player of the week on May 3 for going 7 for 14 with a double, three home runs and 10 RBI in the Pirates’ four-game sweep over Willamette. She has 11 home runs and is fourth in the conference with 39 RBI.
• Washington State junior shortstop Kodie Kolden from Lake City HS is among 100 players on the Brooks Wallace Award Watch List by the College Baseball Foundation that will select the player it considers college baseball’s best shortstop.
In 38 games through May 6, Kolden was second on the Cougars with 31 RBI and fifth with a .314 batting average while fielding .947. Gonzaga junior shortstop Ernie Yake is also on the list for the award named for a former Texas Tech shortstop (1977-80) who died of leukemia at age 27.
• Max McCullogh, Eastern Oregon’s redshirt senior guard from Post Falls, became the first player in Mountaineer men’s basketball history to eclipse the 2,000-point career mark late in the first half of a May 1, 106-87 victory over visiting Pacific. He scored a team-high 27 points in the game to cap a 44-point weekend that left him with 2,013 career points.
• Trystan Bradley, a Lewis-Clark State senior from Lewiston, was named to the 2020-21 CoSIDA NAIA Academic All-District® 4 men’s basketball first team with a 3.70 GPA in exercise science. He is eligible for the CoSIDA Academic NAIA men’s All-America® team.
• Whitworth athletes collected four spots on All-Northwest Conference teams in women’s and men’s tennis and women’s lacrosse.
Senior Avery Liening, who had been a second-team selection in 2019, was named to the women’s tennis first team while sophomore Ethan Violette was on the men’s tennis second team. The women’s tennis second team included George Fox senior Laney Search from Sandpoint.
Freshman defender Jenae Mercado was on the All-NWC women’s lacrosse first team and sophomore midfielder Madison Perry received honorable mention.
• No. 2- seeded Whitworth saw its nine-match winning streak and its women’s tennis season end with a 5-0 loss to top-seeded Linfield in the NWC championship match on Saturday in McMinnville, Oregon. It gave the Wildcats the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Division III tournament.
• Eastern Washington and Idaho both collected multiple spots when the Big Sky Conference named its women’s and men’s all-conference teams in tennis.
The Eagles landed freshman Jennifer Kida, who had a 9-4 overall record and 5-1 at No. 1 singles, on the singles first team while sophomore Renta Gabuzyan received honorable mention in singles and the pairing of freshman Scout Mathews and junior Louise Waite were honorable mention in doubles.
Idaho’s selections were led by freshman Francisco Bascon, the Big Sky men’s most valuable player, who also earned spots on the all-conference first team in singles and doubles. His doubles partner, sophomore Bruno Casino, was also on the men’s second team in singles.
On the women’s side, freshman Katherine Jhang was all-conference second team in singles.
• Five members of the Gonzaga women’s tennis team and one on the men’s were named to 2021 All-West Coast Conference teams, led by grad student Hannah Jones and junior Adrianna Sosnowska, who were on the second team in women’s doubles.
Sophomore Cate Broerman and grad students Haruna Tsuruta and Kate Ketels earned women’s singles honorable mention with Ketels and Tsuruta also selected honorable mention in doubles.
Sophomore Matthew Hollingworth was named men’s singles honorable mention.
• Courtney Jackson, a CCS sophomore from Central Valley, earned her a second Northwest Athletic Conference athlete of the week honor in women’s golf after she claimed medalist honors in the Spokane Invite April 19-20 at MeadowWood with a 5-over-par 160 (84-76).
• The All-Northwest Conference women’s rowing team includes Pacific Lutheran senior Hannah Beach from Rosalia. Beach and Elizabeth Horner, a junior from Mt. Spokane, are members of the Lutes’ varsity eight that won a fifth straight NWC rowing championship.
• Idaho senior Cade Coffey finished among the top three when the Augusta Sports Council named the Punter of the Year for the Football Championship Subdivision on Friday. Senior DJ Arnson from Northern Arizona was the recipient. The semifinalists were all from the Big Sky. The other was Daniel Whelan from UC Davis.
Football
Aaron Prier, an assistant at his alma mater, Idaho State, since 2016, has been hired by Eastern Washington as running backs coach and community relations coordinator. He replaces Kevin Maurice, an EWU aide for four seasons who left for the same position at New Mexico State.
Prier played for the Bengals from 2011-14, spending most of his career as a running back, wide receiver and kick returner. He was named to the 2014 CFPA Kickoff Returner Award Watch List. His career ended in the fifth game of his senior season when he suffered a knee injury.
On the ISU staff, Prier spent the 2020-21 season coaching inside receivers and tight ends and also served as recruiting coordinator. He joined the Bengals in 2016 as a graduate assistant working with cornerback and was hired full time in 2017, coaching tight ends from 2017-19.
Hockey
Adam Beckman, 19-year-old Spokane Chiefs forward, was named Western Hockey League player of the week after he collected six goals and one assist the week of April 29-May 2. The Minnesota Wild prospect’s production included two hat tricks as the Chiefs went 2-0-1-0.
Letters of intent
Whitworth volleyball: Sophia TurningRobe, S, Mead HS, All-GSL 3A/4A; Cassidy Franklin, MB, Meridian, Idaho (Mountain View HS).
Tennis
Jonas Piibor, who has coached the Gonzaga University men’s tennis team the last three seasons, has resigned to pursue other opportunities in the sport, GU announced.
Under Piibor, GU men’s tennis set multiple program records, including a program-best second-place finish in the West Coast Conference in 2018-19. The Zags also earned the program’s first ITA National Ranking, climbing as high as No. 62 in February 2020, and earned a program-record 10 ITA Scholar Athlete awards in 2020.
Volleyball
McKenna Marshall, a 6-foot-1, first-team All-West Coast Conference outside hitter at San Francisco, has transferred to Gonzaga for the 2021 fall season, Zags coach Diane Nelson announced.
Marshall spent three seasons with the Dons, but due an extra year of eligibility granted by the NCAA due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she has two seasons of eligibility remaining. She averaged 3.30 kills and 2.1 digs per set during her three seasons at USF while hitting .168. This past season, she ranked second in the WCC with 281 kills.
Miscellany
The Great Northwest Athletic Conference, an NCAA Division II program with 10 schools in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alaska and British Columbia, announced it will bring the conference’s 2022 to 2024 indoor track and field championships to The Podium in downtown Spokane. The 2022 event is scheduled for Feb. 21-22.
It was earlier announced The Podium will be the site of the 2022 USATF Indoor Championships on Feb. 25 and 26.