Locally: Spokane’s Dave Gunderson leads softball team to gold medal at Huntsman World Senior Games
All Dave Gunderson wanted to do was “play with guys my own age.”
But he’s discovered through the years – read: getting older – that finding guys his age in the Spokane area who play competitive softball is a challenge not too much unlike putting a round stick on a round ball and hitting it squarely. It’s a challenge.
So Gunderson, a retired longtime teacher and coach who will be 81 in December and has been playing the senior game for three decades, hooked up with a team of players at least six years his junior from the Portland area and drove to St. George, Utah, for his first venture into the Huntsman World Senior Games.
Turns out the roughly 29-hour round trip was worth it. With 80-year-old Don Reid of Hayden, Idaho, as a travel companion and pickup teammate, the Suburban Auto team they joined won the gold medal in the 74-year-old+ B Division.
Gunderson, who helped launch the Spokane senior softball program in 2005 and has won multiple medals, including gold, in U.S., World and state senior tournaments, acknowledged that winning once again as the old man on the team “was a lot of fun. But that’s what (playing) is all about, having fun.”
Suburban Auto went 0-3 in the seeding games, “but we were in every game,” he said.
That record got Suburban a first-round matchup in the six-team division with the team that went 3-0 – Northwest Silvers from the Puget Sound area. Suburban won 20-7. That was followed by 15-11 and 17-5 wins that put the team in the division championship game against – yep – Northwest Silvers, which won its way back through the loser’s bracket to get a rematch.
“They have a rule you can only score five runs an inning,” Gunderson said. “They scored one run in their first inning and we scored five. We led 15-1 in the bottom of the fourth, had the bases loaded and I was coming to bat. They threw in the towel. Said that’s it. We won 15-1.”
Gunderson hit .500, drove in seven runs and scored nine in the tournament, but that’s not likely what he’ll most remember about his first Huntsman World Senior Games.
In the championship game, Suburban Auto lost its third baseman. Gunderson, who is left-handed, has played first base and the outfield throughout his playing days.
“The coach came and ask me, ‘you ever play third?’ I said, never. He said, ‘that’s perfect. You’re playing third the rest of the game.’
“Our shortstop was also left-handed,” Gunderson said. “The umpire came out and said ‘I’ve umpired 50 years and I’ve never seen two left-handers on the left side of the infield.’ He then turned around, went back and got the game going again.”
A special memory to go with a gold medal.
College scene
There was more significance to Washington State’s five-set Pac-12 volleyball win over Arizona on Friday night in Bohler Gym than extending the Cougars’ two-season home winning streak to 11 matches. It was coach Jen Greeny‘s 200th victory in her 12 seasons as Cougars’ coach.
Led by Laura Jansen‘s 27 kills, WSU rallied from a first-set loss and hung on in the fifth set for a 22-25, 26-24, 23-25, 25-16, 16-14 win that made Greeny the second Cougars coach to win 200 matches. Cindy Fredrick won 261 in 15 season from 1990 through 2003. It was Greeny’s 312th career coaching win. She won 112 in four seasons at Lewis-Clark State.
• Katy Ryan, WSU’s sophomore opposite from Lakeland of Rathdrum, had 13 kills and a career-high-tying eight blocks Oct. 16 in the Cougars’ volleyball sweep of Utah in Salt Lake City, 25-21, 25-23, 27-25.
• Seattle Pacific sophomores Annika Esvelt (4.0 GPA, West Valley) and Libby Michael (3.94, Lakeside of Nine Mile Falls) repeated on the 2022 Great Northwest Athletic Conference women’s cross country All-Academic team.
They were joined by two sophomores at Central Washington from the area, Rose Melville (3.79 Lamont) and Kelli Heim (3.65, Pullman), who earned their first academic honor.
• Idaho juniors Francisco Bascon and Matteo Masala finished second in doubles at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Mountain Regional Oct. 17 in Albuquerque, N.M., to solidify a spot in the ITA Fall National Championships Nov. 2-6 in San Diego.
• Sienna Swannack, a Carroll College grad student guard from Lakeside of Nine Mile Falls, has been named to the Frontier Conference women’s basketball all-conference preseason team for a second straight year. She followed that selection last season by being named All-Frontier second team.
Golf
Jeff Gove of The Idaho Club in Sandpoint won all three of his matches and received the Bob McKendrick Award voted on by members of the senior amateur team after helping lead the professionals to a 10½-9½ victory in the 31st Senior Hudson Cup last week at the Tacoma Golf & Country Club.
Gove scored a 4 & 3 victory over amateur Nate Hair of Manito Golf & Country Club in Friday’s singles matches. Thursday, he teamed with Dave Christensen of The Club at Black Rock in Coeur d’Alene for a foursome win and with Billy Bomar of Bomar Putting Co. in Post Falls for a four-ball win.
Hair won his four-ball match Thursday.
Area amateurs Andrew Von Lossow of Manito and Reid Hatley of Hayden Lake Country Club didn’t collect a point in the 74th Hudson Cub matches, won 13½-6½ by the professionals.
• Johannes Hounsgaard from Munich, Germany, has joined the Idaho men’s golf team as a graduate transfer from Grand Canyon University, Vandals coach David Nuhn announced.
Before attending Grand Canyon, Hounsgaard played two years at Wayland Baptist, where he was an NAIA All-American and medalist at the 2019 Sooner Athletic Conference Championships. After graduating from Grand Canyon, he returned to Germany to play, finishing third in the Bavarian Open.
Hockey
The Spokane Chiefs will be represented by head coach Ryan Smith and rookie center Berkly Catton in the 2022 World Under-17 Hockey Challenge Nov. 3-12 in Langley and Delta, British Columbia.
Smith will be an assistant coach for Team Canada Red and Catton is one of 66 players, 24 from the Western Hockey League, who will form three Canadian teams.
Letters of intent
Eastern Washington men’s and women’s track/cross country: Konner Dobosh, javelin, Cheney; Grace Bruno, jumps, Valley Christian; Emma Glanzer, jumps, Shadle Park; Kaiya Sollie, distances, Shadle Park.
Track/cross country
Two athletes who helped produce successful seasons at Spokane Falls Community College the last two years are among four transfers joining the Eastern Washington University men’s track & field and cross country teams, the Eagles announced.
Bradley Fillis, a thrower from Central Valley, three-time NWAC champion in the hammer, shot put and discus, and Anthony Carlascio, a distance runner from West Valley HS in Yakima, an All-American in the 1,500, steeplechase and 5K in 2022, will be juniors at Eastern.
Also joining the Eagles are junior Cody Teevens, a multi-events specialist from Pullman, transferring from Washington State, where he won the 2021 Bigfoot Multi-Events and placed 11th in the Pac-12 decathlon in 2021, and senior Jordan Brannan, a distance runner from Colts Neck, N.J., transferring from Iona University. He was a two-time NCAA Division I Championships cross country qualifier who won multiple conference indoor distance championships.