The Spokesman-Review’s Jim Meehan wins Washington state Sportswriter of the Year

From staff reports

Jim Meehan has been named Washington state Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association.

Meehan, 58, has covered Gonzaga basketball full time for The Spokesman-Review since the 2007-08 season. It’s the first time he’s won the Washington state award after earning the Idaho distinction five times while working in the S-R’s North Idaho office.

Meehan, who attended Washington State University, was sports editor at the Moscow-Pullman Daily News before joining The Spokesman-Review in 1990. He and his wife, Jodene, live in Post Falls and are the parents of three daughters – Danielle, Allison and Brenna, who are all former college volleyball players.

Beyond impeccable day-to-day coverage of the Zags, his 2021 GU highlights include a story on the pressures of trying to go unbeaten (with interviews from Quinn Buckner, Jim Crews and Tom Abernathy – all former players on the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, the last team to achieve perfection), a look at Nolan Hickman’s charitable foundation and the heartbreaking tale of former player Jeremy Eaton’s battle with cancer.

In addition to GU, Meehan also covers golf for the S-R. In August, he told the entertaining story of the cash-strapped Eastern Washington men’s golf team, whose 1997 pursuit of the Big Sky title fell just short before the school finally cut the progam for good the following spring.

Meehan becomes the third S-R writer to win the Washington Sportswriter of the Year award: John Blanchette was a 10-time winner (most recently in 2016), and Harry Missildine won in 1965.

The NSMA began giving state sportswriting awards in 1959.