Locally: Mt. Spokane graduate Michaela Thompson all-league second team; Spokane wins NWAC women’s soccer championship

From staff and news services

Michaela Thompson had a career season for the Doane University women’s soccer team, and the senior forward from Mt. Spokane High School was duly rewarded, selected to the 2022 All-Great Plains Athletic Conference second team.

A starter since her freshman season, Thompson was the Tigers’ leading scorer with eight goals and four assists. The goals are the most for a Tiger since 2015. She had 40 shots on goal, three game winners and converted her only penalty kick. That capped a career in which she had 15 goals – six of them winners – and nine assists.

Two of Thompson’s teammates are also from Spokane, the Torok sisters from Lakeside (Nine Mile Falls). Lexi, a junior forward, was the Tigers’ second-leading scorer with seven goals and three assists. Liz, a senior defender who was All-GPAC in 2019, didn’t score.

Lexi was named to the 2022 College Sports Communicators NAIA Scholar-Athlete All-District team with a GPA of 3.50 or better and all three have earned scholar-athlete awards during their careers.

• After falling behind 2-0 during stoppage time in the first half, Community Colleges of Spokane scored three unanswered goals starting less than a minute after Clark had the two-goal lead and pulled out a 3-2 victory over the Clark Penguins Nov. 13 in Tukwila, Washington, to win its third Northwest Athletic Conference women’s soccer championship.

Tournament MVP Alexa Deatherage (North Central) scored her third goal of the tournament early in the second half to draw the Sasquatch even and Ellie Johnson’s (Mt. Spokane) goal in the 57th minute proved the winner. Madison Carr (West Valley) scored the first goal on a header off Peyton Bastine’s (University) perfectly placed corner kick.

Spokane, which finished second in the East Region, advanced to the championship match with a 2-1 win over Chemeketa, a shootout win over reigning champion Peninsula on penalty kicks in the quarterfinals and a 4-1 win over Lower Columbia in the semifinals. Deatherage had two goals and Johnson and Kylee Gallegos one each in that one.

• Northwest Nazarene grad student forward Jake Levine (Central Valley) was named to the 2022 Division II Conference Commissioners Association (D2CCA) men’s soccer All-West Region second team.

• Gonzaga senior Demitrius Kigeya is one of three forwards named to the All-West Coast Conference first team in men’s soccer, his fifth WCC postseason honor. He was on the all-freshman team in 2018 and a second-team All-WCC pick the last three years.

College scene

Eastern Washington sophomore Jaydia Martin shared the Big Sky Conference’s first women’s basketball player of the week award Nov. 15 after averaging 16.7 points and shooting 47.1% from the field in three Eagles victories the previous week.

Martin, who shared the honor with Montana State senior Darian White, shot 57.1% on 3-pointers and added eight steals, seven assists and nine rebounds to her 50 points.

• Sienna Swannack, a grad student guard at Carroll College (Lakeside-Nine Mile Falls), was the Frontier Conference women’s basketball player of the week on Nov. 14 after she averaged 14 points, 4.7 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 2.3 steals as the No. 4 Fighting Saints went 2-1 on a road trip to Indiana.

She capped the trip with 22 points and nine rebounds in a win over No. 7 Marian University.

• Washington State senior outside hitter Pia Timmer was named Pac-12 volleyball’s offensive player of the week Nov. 14 for the third time in her career after she averaged 4.57 kills per set and collected her third double-double of the season (19 kills, 11 digs) in a four-set win at Arizona.

Her fifth straight match with double-digit kills, moving her into a tie for ninth at WSU in career kills (1,180), was preceded by a match-high 13 kills, nine of them with no errors in the third set, of WSU’s 12th sweep of the season at Arizona State.

• Three athletes with area ties, two at Central Washington, collected 2022 All-Great Northwest Athletic Conference honors in volleyball.

Central junior outside hitter Ashley Kaufman (Lake City) was a first-team repeater. Her sophomore teammate, libero Hannah Stires (Lakeside-Nine Mile Falls), and Saint Martin’s sophomore OH Tia Allen (Mt. Spokane) were honorable mention.

• Katherine McEuen, a Carroll College senior OH/RS from Mead, was named to the 2022 All-Frontier Conference volleyball first team and Fighting Saints teammate Kylie Kackman, a senior setter from Colfax, received the school’s volleyball Champions of Character award.

• Klaire Mitchell, Grand Canyon’s senior setter from Lake City, was named to the All-Western Athletic Conference first team in volleyball for a third straight year. It’s her sixth postseason award. She was setter of the year the last two seasons and on the second-team as a freshman.

• Jack Prka, Carroll College’s sophomore quarterback from Coeur d’Alene HS, was named Frontier Conference football offensive player of the week after he led the No. 21 Fighting Saints to a 21-6 road over No. 11 College of Idaho Nov. 12. Prka completed 17 of 26 passes (63%) for 275 yards and three touchdowns.

• Gonzaga and Washington State announced their athletic teams all exceed the NCAA’s national average for Graduation Success Rate according to recent figures supplied by the NCAA.

Gonzaga has a 97% GSR with 11 teams achieving 100%. WSU has a steadily improving, program-best 91% with four sports at 100%. Nationally, the Division I GSR is 89%.

See school websites – gozags.com and wsucougars.com – for more information.

Letters of intent

Coeur d’Alene High School: Madi Symons, F, Wyoming women’s basketball.

Transfer: WSU baseball, Alan Shibley, INF, jr., Sapulpa, Oklahoma/San Jacinto (California) College.

Miscellany

Matt Brewer, a 2002 graduate of Whitman College who has been involved in athletic administration for 19 years, has been hired as associate athletic director for compliance at the University of Idaho, director of Athletics Terry Gawlik announced.

Most recently, Brewer worked in a consulting role for institutional compliance offices across the country following six years as associate athletic director for compliance at Boise State.

At Idaho, he will oversee compliance of the department’s 16 Division I teams and its student-athletes.