Congratulations to Riley Hein, Alissa Pudlitzke, Livi Cox, Rylee Seekins (twice), Kaden Harbertson, Tayrn Ries, Nicole Goecke, Marie Matthews and Mo Spieth — The Columbian’s fall sports athletes of the week.
And the same goes out to Nate Beasley (twice), Will Noce-Sheldon, Leon Siofele, Justin Straup, Jorden Payne, Nate Arriola, Reilly Hennessey, Brandon Van Pelt, Tommy Harshaw and Jacob Dennis — our football players of the week.
There will be one more name added to this list as we are currently holding the final vote for a football player of the week of the season.
This is the final vote because there is only one team left playing. The Camas Papermakers will face Bellarmine Prep of Tacoma at 7 p.m. Saturday in the Class 4A semifinals at the Tacoma Dome.
The first winter sports athlete of the week vote will begin on Dec. 9.
In the meantime, there will still be opportunities for fans to share their opinions and support their favorite athletes.
As we started last school year, The Columbian is inviting fans to cast their votes for All-Region teams.
We started this process with football last year as the test run. We continued in the winter with basketball and in the spring with baseball, softball and boys soccer.
This fall, fans of volleyball and girls soccer will get their chance to vote.
And before you send me an email complaining about how we’ve taken our All-Region honor and lessened it by turning it into a popularity contest, hang on one second.
We have checks and balances in place. The All-Region selection is a three-pronged process.
First, there is the fan vote. We’ve also asked area coaches to cast their vote. And The Columbian sports staff will make its picks.
In the end, there will be three teams created. Athletes who appear on at least two of those teams will make it onto the final All-Region team.
So if The Columbian and coaches agree on a selection, it really doesn’t matter who the fans vote for.
But if The Columbian and coaches don’t see eye to eye, then the fans cast the swing vote.
That happened a couple of times last year.
There are a couple of caveats to this process.
For one, the choice for the All-Region athlete of the year still belongs to The Columbian. So naturally, our pick will make the final All-Region team. Truth be told, that was not an issue last year.
The other caveat is that we will reserve a couple spots on the final team for 2A and 1A athletes.
Again, this wasn’t a big issue last year. Coaches and fans did a good job of getting small-school athletes represented. But if this year’s vote gets heavy on 4A and 3A athletes, we will make sure smaller schools are also represented.
So go to www.360preps.com and cast your vote today.
The volleyball vote will run through Friday. Then on Saturday, we will start the girls soccer All-Region vote for a few days.
Then, we’ll conclude with the voting for football.
The votes for the coaches will remain active until we feel like we have a good sample of votes.
The All-Region athletes of the year and teams for all fall sports (except tennis and golf; those will revealed in the spring after the state tournaments) will be revealed beginning in December.
