Locally: Club ice skaters qualify for sectional championships
Eight skaters from local clubs, three of whom placed first in their divisions at regionals, have qualified for the Pacific Coast Sectional Figure Skating championships that will be held Nov. 18-22 at Eagles Ice-A-Rena in Spokane.
Seven of the qualifiers are from Lilac City Figure Skating Club, which is the host club for the sectionals.
The eighth, Joey Millet, who placed first in Junior Men at the Northwest Pacific Regionals in Wenatchee Oct. 5-7, lives in Los Angeles and skates for the Spokane Figure Skating Club.
The Lilac City contingent includes Kayleigh Elliott and Collin Woodall-Williams, who won Intermediate Ladies and Intermediate Men, respectively, and Cheyenne King, who placed second behind Elliott in Intermediate Ladies. Elliott, 14, is a freshman at North Central; Woodall-Williams, 14, is a home-schooled eighth grader; and King, 13, is a seventh-grader at Mountainside Middle School in the Mead district.
• Also qualifying were Courtney Kirschke, 15, a sophomore at Mead, second in Novice Ladies; Mackenzie Kazandjian, 13, a home-schooled eighth grader from Missoula, Montana, third in Juvenile Girls; Larissa Rasmussen, 19, a student at Community Colleges of Spokane, fourth in Junior Ladies; and Dmitri Murphy, 17, a senior at Riverdale High School in Portland, fourth in Novice Men.
The top four at each level advanced from regionals to sectionals and the top four at sectionals will compete in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships Jan. 18-25, 2015, in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Lilac City will also be represented in Juvenile Dance by Emily Viehouser, 13, a home-schooled seventh grader, and Woodall-Williams. Sectionals are the first qualifying competition for dance and pairs.
Basketball
Prospective and returning high school basketball referees in Idaho must attend a mandatory rules clinic Oct. 27 at Coeur d’Alene High School.
A mandatory meeting for all high school coaches will be Oct. 28, also at Coeur d’Alene High. Both are at 7 p.m. in the school library.
For more information, contact District I commissioner John Posnick at (208) 512-3200 or posnick@usamedia.tv.
Bowling
Casey Schierholz got hot at the right time and rode it to the championship of the Junior Bowlers Tour stop at River City Lanes in Post Falls last Sunday.
Schierholz came through the high-scoring qualifying in fourth place and proceeded to defeat Raymond Worthey, who had vaulted from ninth to fifth during qualifying by compiling a 3-1 record during the match-play portion; then Mathew Shears and Vanessa Wanderweide, who had qualified third and second, respectively, to gain a shot at leading qualifier Clint Norlen, who led the boys in scoring with a 268 game. Schierholz won 237-182.
Vanderweide, who rolled a 922 four-game series in the first qualifying block and led the girls in scoring with a 279 game, finished third; Shears was fourth; and Worthey fifth.
The JBT is at Sunset Lanes in Coeur d’Alene next Sunday.
College scene
Josh Straughan, the former Colton standout who is a junior quarterback at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, has received a collection of honors in football the previous two weeks after accounting for more than 800 yards and 12 touchdowns in a pair of victories.
Straughan, who missed much of the 2013 season with a broken collar bone, completed 27 of 40 passes for 488 yards and five touchdowns on Oct. 11 in a 48-36 win over Benedict College a week after hitting 17 of 27 passes for 292 yards and six TDs and running for a seventh score in three quarters in a 55-13 win over Lane.
For those efforts, he was named the Offensive Player of the Week in the NCAA Division II Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference both weeks, and the Bostorow National Player of the Week and one of 15 players honored nationally by the Beyond Sports Network following the Oct. 11 game.
It is the fifth time in his career Straughan has been the SIAC Offensive Player of the Week and the second time he was honored on back-to-back weeks.
In games through Oct. 11, he passed for 1,363 yards and 16 touchdowns, bringing his career totals to 4,546 yards and 40 TDs.
• Brett Moser, a Whitworth wide receiver from Moses Lake, was named the Northwest Conference Offensive Player of the Week in football for the week ending Oct. 12 after returning five kickoffs for 167 yards, one of them 94 yards for a touchdown, and catching 10 passes for 135 yards in a 61-45 win over Willamette.
• Micheal Ramos, a junior men’s soccer player from University, and Maddye Dinsmore, a junior volleyball player from Burns, Oregon, are the Whitworth Student-Athletes of the Month for September.
Ramos led the Pirates to an 8-0-1 start with team and Northwest Conference-leading 10 goals and nine assists and was twice the NWC Athlete of the Week. Dinsmore, who collected one NWC Athlete of the Week award, averaged 10.1 assists, 3.3 digs, nearly one kill and 0.45 aces per set as the Pirates started 9-4.
Motorcycle racing
Wyatt Maguire of Mead, whose successes in 2013 earned him the No. 1 plate in the Pro Class of American Motorcycle Association flat track racing, didn’t miss a beat in 2014 despite stepping up in class.
Riding against the best in the U.S. and the world on bigger and faster Expert Class, two-cylinder bikes, Maguire received the Saddlemen Grand National Championship Rookie of the Year award when the AMA Pro Flat Track season wound up last weekend in Pomona, California.
Maguire, a former Mt. Spokane High School wrestler and an assistant wrestling coach at his alma mater, made the main event in all seven of the series’ 16 races in which he competed and wound up 18th overall in his first season in the premier class. He was fifth among riders with nine or fewer starts. Maguire finished 17th in the season finale.
Soccer
EWU women’s soccer goalkeeper coach Rich Cullen was honored as part of the Seattle Sounders’ 40th anniversary celebration earlier this month.
Cullen joined the Sounders’ organization in 2001 when Seattle was a member of the United Soccer League First Division. He earned the starting goalkeeper spot prior to the 2003 season, leading the Sounders to the league semis while earning all-league honors.
A Spokane native, Cullen graduated from Mead High School before playing collegiate soccer at Air Force, earning all-conference honors three times.