The winter sports season is over, but there’s one last piece of unfinished business — All-Region.
Beginning Wednesday, The Columbian will unveil its athletes of the year and All-Region teams in each of the seven winter sports — gymnastics, bowling, boys and girls wrestling, boys swimming and boys and girls basketball.
And when it comes to the basketball teams, like we did in the fall with football, The Columbian is asking for fan input in selecting the team.
If you’re reading this column in The Columbian print edition, go to www.360preps.com and look for the story about our online All-Region basketball vote. If you’re reading this online, simply click here to vote for boys basketball or click here to vote for girls basketball.
The vote will continue through Friday. We are also asking coaches to cast their votes, too. Coaches, if you haven’t received an email about this from your athletic director, contact me and I’ll send you the information.
In order to make their way onto our All-Region ballot, a player must have earned a spot on their all-league first team.
After the voting is done, we will take the results of the fan vote and coaches vote and combine them with selections made by The Columbian staff to arrive at our final All-Region team.
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Speaking of all-league teams, The Columbian will be publishing winter all-league teams in its print edition on Wednesday. We’ve been posting all-league teams on our preps blog for the past month as we have received them.
Now that we have them all, we’ll put them in print.
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And speaking of voting, USA Today is conducting an online poll, asking readers to vote for the best high school mascots in each state.
The Camas Papermakers and Ridgefield Spudders join the Richland Bombers, Blaine Borderites and Shelton Highclimbers in the Washington vote.
Readers have until 3 p.m. Tuesday to cast their votes. You can vote by going to http://contest.usatodayhss.com/vote/mascot/wa.
As of mid-day Sunday, the Spudders and Bombers were the frontrunners.
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Ever since the WIAA went to the eight-team state basketball tournaments — all played during the same week — it created a week-long gap between the end of the winter season and start of spring.
Area golf teams will participate in preseason golf jamborees on Tuesday, but the spring season in Clark County officially kicks off with a handful of baseball and boys soccer matches on Saturday.
Tim Martinez is the assistant sports editor/prep coordinator for The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-735-4538, tim.martinez@columbian.com or follow his Twitter handle @360TMart.
