Story Photos
 Nate Nyman hollers to his teammates after scoring during the state title game against Kennewick at Safeco Field in Seattle. Bill Wagner / Daily News file
|
Top sports stories of 2008: No. 6 to No. 10
Saturday, January 3, 2009 9:59 AM PST
By Rick McCorkle
Printable version
E-mail this articleA small-town football team advances to the state semifinals. Three prep softball standouts sign Division I letters of intent. And a baseball team advances to the state title game.
Those are some of the storylines that make up the top local sports stories of 2008. The Daily News sports staff voted on this year’s Top 10, and today’s story focuses on Nos. 6-10.
The top five team and individual sporting accomplishments will be highlighted on Wednesday, including a community college softball dynasty, a basketball team that finished its season undefeated with a state title, and a female two-time state wrestling champion.
Here’s a glance at the stories, counting down from 10 to 6:
NUMBER 10 (tie)
Monarchs add transfers from Sequim and Kansas
In recent years, the Mark Morris boys basketball team has drawn plenty of attention from the local sports community for transfer players.
Two years ago, 6-foot-9 center Eric Hutchison transferred to Mark Morris from Kalama for his sophomore year. Last year, 6-7 forward Matt Trautman also transferred to MM from Kalama for his senior year.
In May, brothers John and Casey DeVries from rural Syracuse, Kan., enrolled at MM to play football and basketball, and brothers Nic and Dalton Thacker moved from Sequim.
The DeVries brothers are the grandsons of former University of Puget Sound men’s basketball coach Don Zech, who coached current MM head boys basketball coach Bill Bakamus when he played for UPS.
In late August, the DeVries brothers were ruled ineligible to participate in athletics after appearing before a District 4 panel, but the decision was appealed by their parents and Mark Morris through the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA).
The WIAA allowed the school to declare them eligible as long as the appropriate paperwork was filed and the school was satisfied that all eligibility requirements were met.
Nic Thacker, a senior, was a two-year starter for the football team and an all-league performer in basketball at Sequim. His brother, a sophomore, saw varsity minutes in basketball as a freshman.
The boys’ father, Matt Thacker, who played football at UPS and was friends with Bakamus when they both attended school there.
Early in the current basketball season, John DeVries is a starting guard for MM and one of the top scorers on the team. The Thacker brothers are key reserves.
NUMBER 10 (tie)
Naselle football team advances to state semis
After starting its football season with nonleague losses to Wahkiakum (13-0), Warrenton (28-12) and Ilwaco (43-14), it didn’t look like Naselle was going to finish in the top half of the Pacific 2B League, let alone make a run for a state title.
But the Comets won six of their next seven games to claim second place in league and grab the fourth seed from District 4 into the 2B state playoffs, where they beat Seattle Lutheran (34-7) and league nemesis Willapa Valley (28-24) to reach the semis for the first time in school history.
Naselle fell to eventual state champion Napavine 18-13 in the semifinal game played Nov. 28 in the Tacoma Dome to conclude their season with an 8-5 record.
NUMBER 8
Three softball players ink Division I letters of intent
R.A. Long’s Baily Harris, Kelso’s Crystal Nyman and Rainier’s Raeanne Hanks all have two things in common.
Each of the seniors are top-flight softball pitchers, and all three inked letters of intent to play at Division I schools beginning next fall.
Harris opted to stay close to home and toil at the University of Washington. Nyman chose to play at Temple University in Philadelphia. And Hanks decided on the University of Vermont.
Harris, who chose UW over Stanford, the University of the Pacific and several Ivy League schools, became the first female athlete in RAL school history to receive an athletic scholarship to a Pac-10 Conference college.
During her career at Kelso, Nyman has mastered six pitches — the fastball, curve, drop, change, screw and rise. She had a 0.48 earned run average as a sophomore, which she shaved down to 0.16 as a junior - including three consecutive no-hitters during the regular season and a perfect game with 17 strikeouts in a 1-0 district tournament win over Mount Rainier.
She also hit .353 as a junior, was named the Greater St. Helens 3A League Most Valuable Player and earned all-state honorable mention honors.
A three-year starter with the Columbians, Hanks had a 2.40 earned run average and a .360 batting average, which she improved to a 1.33 ERA and a .386 batting average as a sophomore. Last season, she posted a 0.50 ERA and a .580 batting average to earn Oregon Class 3A all-state kudos for the second straight year.
NUMBER 7
Area says goodbye to local sports standouts
A state Hall of Fame wrestling coach, a former all-around athlete who made a career mentoring college and professional football players, and a youth baseball visionary who was instrumental in bringing the first youth baseball World Series to Longview.
These individuals were among eight area athletic standouts who died in 2008.
• Bob Gambold, a standout three-sport athlete at R.A. Long High who went on to play football and basketball at Washington State University before playing and coaching professional football, died Oct. 24 at age 79 near his home in Chandler, Ariz.
During his years at RAL, Gambold was a standout in football, basketball and baseball, and was named Cowlitz County’s top athlete in 1946 after leading the Lumberjacks to a fourth-place finish in the state basketball tournament, the best-ever finish in school history. He would later earn induction into the RAL Hall of Fame in 2006, and into the Southwest Washington Softball Hall of Fame in 2007.
After graduation, he played football and basketball at Washington State University, where he lettered four years in football and three in basketball, earned all-conference honors in basketball and was inducted into the school’s athletic Hall of Fame in 1988. He’s still ranked among the top-10 men’s basketball players in field goal percentage in school history.
• Castle Rock’s Jim Bair could be described as a teacher, psychologist and master motivator with a knack for bringing out the best in everyone he touched. Whether it was the wrestlers and coaches he taught, or gathering volunteer help to run a tournament or special event, Bair was gifted in the ability to convince others to do the right thing.
Bair, who coached wrestling for nearly four decades, died March 21 at age 64.
During his 15-year tenure at Castle Rock, the Rockets won 13 league titles and two state championships while compiling a 234-37-4 record. They won 12 straight Trico championships, went undefeated in league competition and reeled off a 53-match regular-season winning streak, and won 85 of 89 dual meets.
The Rockets won state titles in 1984 and ‘85, were second at state in ‘81 and ‘82, third in ‘83, sixth in ‘86, eighth in ‘78 and ‘80 and 10th in ‘88.
In 2004, Bair was inducted into the Washington State Wrestling Coaches Hall of Fame.
• Bill Daniels envisioned putting Longview on the national stage to host youth World Series baseball games when he visited Holman Stadium in Nashua, N.H., for the Bambino World Series in 1988.
Longview went on to host the Bambino World Series under Daniels’ guidance in 1990, and has since hosted numerous Babe Ruth World Series at David Story Field.
Daniels died at age 54 on July 28 at his home on the Long Beach Peninsula. He was a life-long area resident who graduated from Mark Morris High School and attended Washington State University.
• During his stint as head coach at Kelso High School, Charles William “C.W.” Totten taught his Hilanders to play an exciting brand of fast-break basketball and in-your-face pressure defense.
Totten died at his Longview home on Jan. 3 at age 75.
Totten began his coaching career in Post Falls, Idaho, in 1957, and won state titles in 1963 and ‘64 before leaving in ‘64 to teach and coach at Hellgate High in Montana. He later returned to Post Falls for two seasons before coming to Kelso in 1968. He taught biology and coached boys basketball during 1970-76.
• Matt Kofler, son of former Kelso High football coach Otto Kofler and a four-year NFL veteran, died at age 49 of an undisclosed illness on Dec. 19 at his home in El Cajon, Calif.
Kofler was born Aug. 29, 1959 in Longview and graduated from San Diego’s Patrick Henry High School in 1978. He later played quarterback at Mesa College and San Diego State University, where he earned All-American honors. He was selected in the second round of the 1982 NFL Draft by Buffalo where he spent three seasons before playing one campaign with the Indianapolis Colts.
• He was known as Buddy or Bergy to his family and friends, and Jerry Bergquist would call his friends Pork Chop, Tiger or Porky.
Bergquist, an outstanding athlete, softball coach, manager, sponsor, umpire and business owner, died at age 78 on April 11.
A 1947 graduate of Kelso High School, Bergquist was a member of the 1955 Shamrock Tavern team that won the Washington State Championship with a 1-0 victory over the Seattle Federals. The team later won the regional title and earned a berth in the World Tournament in Clearwater, Fla., but failed to bring home a world championship.
He later bought the Shamrock and operated it until 1972. From the early 1950s through the early ‘70s, Shamrock was the fastpitch team to beat in the Pacific Northwest. During a stretch from 1965-72, the tavern teams won five state titles in eight seasons.
• Lifelong local resident Clyde “Steve” Shumway, who played football at Kelso High School, was a wrestler in the U.S. Navy and was one of the top local fastpitch pitchers in the area, died at age 67 on Dec. 9.
After numerous years of fastpitch, Shumway turned to playing slowpitch softball and was a standout for many years with the Shamrock Tavern over-50 teams that won titles across the Pacific Northwest.
• Larry Kessinger, another of the top fastpitch softball players in the area, died at age 65 on Dec. 12 in Colusa, Calif.
Kessinger’s local softball prowess earned him induction into the Southwest Washington Fastpitch Softball Hall of Fame in 2007.
NUMBER 6
Kelso baseball reaches Class 3A state title game
In late May, the Kelso baseball team made history when it advanced to the title game of the Class 3A State Baseball Championships at Safeco Field — but not the type of history it was looking for.
Kennewick won its first-ever state baseball championship when it beat the Hilanders 24-12, setting a big-school record for runs scored in a single game. The 36 combined runs were also the most scored by two teams in any title game in any classification.
Kelso (25-2) advanced to the championship after it beat Meadowdale in the semifinals. In the semis, Trevor May scattered three hits and struck out 12 in his final game in a Kelso uniform as the Hilanders won 5-1.
Past Month's Most Commented Stories