Trey Knight of Ridgefield and Yacine Guermali of Camas concluded their track and field seasons at the NCAA West Preliminary Rounds last weekend at College Station, Texas.
While both narrowly missed advancing the NCAA Championship in Eugene, both made significant strides this season.
Knight, a true freshman at USC, placed 16th in the hammer throw. His mark of 210 feet, 1 inch narrowly missed the automatic NCAA qualifying mark of 213-6. The top 12 finishers in each event advanced.
Knight finished fifth at the Pac-12 Championships and had a personal best of 226-9.
Guermali finished a standout season for Gonzaga at the NCAA West Preliminary Round.
The redshirt sophomore from Camas finished 20th overall in the 5,000 meters. He finished in 14:06, which was 10th in his heat as he beat his seeding position of 38th.
This season, Guermali ran the second-fastest 5,000 meters in Gonzaga history when he clocked 13:50.74 on April 30.
“I feel like in a race that anything can happen,” Guermali told GoZags.com. “There were a lot of great runners. A couple of the guys in front of me were Olympic Trials guys. I gained a lot of experience out here and I see the standard. When I came here for the first time two years ago, I was probably about 16 seconds off what I needed, and this time I was about six seconds off. I got to keep finishing higher in these championship races.”
Christensen helps C of I softball place third
Kaily Christensen helped College of Idaho softball to the best finish in program history.
Tuesday, the Yotes finished third at the NAIA World Series in Columbus, Ga.
Christensen was more than just a minor factor as a true freshman. The infielder from Woodland was second on the team with a .362 batting average, led the team with 50 RBI and was second with 66 hits, including a team-high 17 doubles.
Christensen scored two runs in C of I’s opening game of the World Series, a 4-2 win over Ottawa (Kansas). She then went 1 for 3 in a 6-4 win over top-seeded Southern Oregon.
College of Idaho lost to Oregon Tech then was eliminated by Southern Oregon, which won the championship by winning five consecutive games after losing to the Yotes.
Ex-Clark, Kelso pitcher headed to D-II World Series
Sasha Jabusch and the Northwest Nazarene baseball team are headed to the NCAA Division II World Series.
The senior from Kelso, who played at Clark in 2018, helped pitch the Nighthawks to their first World Series berth.
Jabusch started nine games, going 3-2 with a 4.25 ERA. In his most recent start last Thursday, he threw a complete game and struck out 10 in a 3-2 win over No. 9-ranked Azusa Pacific at the NCAA West Regional.
That win clinched one of eight berths to the World Series, which begins Saturday at Cary, N.C. The No. 8-seeded Nighthawks (34-8) open against top-seeded Central Missouri and Jabusch is slated to start that game.
Northwest Nazarene, a school in Nampa, Idaho, is the first team from the Great Northwest Athletic Conference to win a regional title and advance to the World Series.
