Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
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PRESCOTT -- Deb Tiedemann was so young at the time, she doesn't even remember exactly when she first started singing songs. The household she grew up in Livingston, Mont., in the late 1960s was always filled with her parents' favorite tunes. Her dad, who was a trucker, would play Jim Reeves, Tammy Wynette, Hank Snow, Hank Williams and Dolly Parton at the house. Tiedemann herself was partial to Mel Tillis. "There was just something about his voice," she said. "I just loved to hear him sing."...
DAYTON - Community members reacted with mixed emotions to the announcement that Columbia County Health System CEO Charlie Button has resigned from his position for greener pastures in May. The district released a statement Monday saying Button, whose contract was up for renewal in early April, is moving on to take a top job at a larger and undisclosed critical access hospital in another state. Button, whose tenure as CEO has been controversial, has held the position for the past four years...
WAITSBURG -- In at least two ways, the 2012 Waitsburg Prescott winter sports season set a major milestone, coaches said at last Thursday's awards gathering for WP cheer squad, wrestling and girls basketball teams. The girls basketball team won the district title again and all of the four WP wrestlers made it to the regional tournament. "It was a tremendous season," head basketball coach Jerry Baker told his players and their parents at the high school auditorium. " The standard has been set pretty high for girls basketball." The basketball...
DAYTON -- Sal Benavides could be in a panic about the upcoming Bulldogs baseball season. His no. 1 pitcher, senior Colton Bickelhaupt, dislocated his shoulder during the basketball season. Bickelhaupt was throwing at speeds in the mid 70s (miles per hour) last year and he developed an effective curve ball . But the head coach isn't too stressed. The good news is that Bickelhaupt might be back on the mound in a few weeks, before the team has to play any league games that matter. And, Benavides...
WAITSBURG -- Waitsburg voters, who elect their mayor and council members every year under the town's territorial charter, are expected to have some options on and off the ballot this April. Mayor Walt Gobel and four of the current five council members are running again after a caucus meeting at Larry and Deanne Johnson's house last week for the Truth & Trust slate that was first elected to office two years ago. Ballots for the election will go our Friday or Monday for the April 2 election. As...
SPOKANE -- The Bulldogs knew the Toutle Lake Fighting Ducks would be tough, but they still had hopes to get around the Western Washington veterans of 19 consecutive arena playoffs . The first quarter, which ended 12-11 in favor of the Bulldogs, had the feeling of a close game. But the Ducks' notorious forward-defense press succeeded in destabilizing the Dayton offense, allowing Toutle Lake to build a growing lead over the Dogs and never look back. Dayton's first Final 8 game ended in a 62-51...
SPOKANE -- The last Touchet Valley basketball team standing fell on the last day of the Hardwood Classic Final 8 tournament at the Spokane Arena, but not without a valiant fight that showed the 2012 Bulldogs had every right to compete against the best in the state. After posting a narrow victory against the LaConner Braves on Friday night, the Dogs faced the Wahkiakum Mules who had put away the Lake Roosevelt Raiders on Friday afternoon to qualify for the fourth/sixth place matchup against...
SPOKANE -- If the Bulldogs' first Final 8 game against the Toutle Lake Fighting Ducks was a downer, their narrow victory over the LaConner Braves in the second matchup on Friday was very much the opposite. After a rough start in which Dayton fell behind, 8-0, during the first quarter, the Bulldogs rallied, pulled ahead and evened the score by halftime, then held on to their lead with tenacity until the bitter, sweet end ."It was quite a defensive battle, a low-scoring game," Bulldog Garett Turne...
WAITSBURG -- To bud as a musician, it helps to have good mentors. Ann Lehman and Daniel FitzSimmons had them. For Lehman, it was Rye Grass String Band guitarist Jon St. Hilaire. For FitzSimmons, it was Nashville musician Skylar Wilson and Old Crow Medicine Show member Cory Younts. But mentors merely plant the seed. The rest comes from within, fed by life stories and audiences that appreciate what they hear, as they do when Lehman and FitzSimmons take the stage as the duo DNA (short for Daniel &...
SPOKANE -- The Dayton Bulldogs themselves may not have registered how far they got into the Hardwood Classic Final 8 last weekend, but for their coach and hometown fans it certainly did register. After their 57-41 Saturday morning loss against the Wahkiakum Mules, the players were subdued and disappointed they didn't place higher. But their coaches and members of their community showed up in big numbers applauded them for being the best high school basketball team in a generation. They placed si...
WALLA WALLA - Perhaps the only way anyone could have leveled the playing field between the WP Cardinals and the Lake Roosevelt Raiders was to raise the hoop board by at least a foot every time 6-foot, 8-inch Raider Ty Egbert stepped inside the key. "We just didn't have the people to match him up," Cardinal Billy Brown said. "It was frustrating." Thanks to the towering Egbert, a senior who has been recruited as a college basketball player by the University of Idaho, the Raiders smashed WP's playoff aspirations, 70- 53. No number of Zach Bartlow...
DAYTON - For McKayla Bickelhaupt, the2012 basketball season started to turn around when she began to trust her new coach. To the junior Bulldog that didn't mean following Clayton Strong blindly. Rather, it meant dropping what she thought was right for her or for the team and doing what he thought was right. It was during the Christmas break, after the team had fallen to a rock bottom, 0-8, record and the naysayers in town were louder than ever. Just then, before the pivotal matchup against Lacro...
WALLA WALLA - For the first time in 17 years, the Dayton Bulldogs are going to Spokane for the Hardwood Classic state basketball championship tournament starting Thursday. After resoundingly beating the Riverside Christian Crusaders from Yakima, 59-41, in front of a predominantly hometown crowd Friday night at Walla Walla High School, the Dogs are now in the Final 8 of their 2B division. "We've worked hard since fifth grade and this was our goal," senior Joey Schlachter said when he emerged from the locker room after the hard physical match...
WAITSBURG - The creation of a digital super highway through the Touchet Valley made some big strides this winter and the conduit for its fiber optics cable may be completed as soon as early spring. Crews have been trenching and boring their way from Walla Walla to Waitsburg through Dixie since the beginning of the year. This week, they are mobilizing to start in Dayton and head in the opposite direction to connect the route to Waitsburg, then on to Clarkston. If all goes well, the 1,600- mile...
DAYTON - If it shoots like a duck and dribbles like a duckhellip;it's a Fighting Duck. The Dayton Bulldogs will face a team from Toutle Lake at the Hardwood Classic in their first Final 8 game in Spokane on Thursday. This phase of the playoffs is double elimination. Even if they lose, the Dogs will face at least one more team at the arena on Friday. The Dayton players are still pinching themselves after putting away Riverside Christian in a convincing, 59-41, victory at Wa Hi Friday night, but...
WALLA WALLA - The Dayton Bulldogs are in the Final 8 in their 2B division after resoundingly beating Riverside Christian 59-41 at Wa Hi Friday night. quot;We worked hard since fifth grade and this was our goal,quot; Bulldog Joey Schlachter said. quot;It was a hard physical game.quot; At first, the Bulldogs seemed to have trouble outpacing the Crusaders from Yakima, but gained the upperhand through a 6-point run just before half time, boosting Dayton's confidence and spirits. Those never let up in the second half, which saw Riverside resorting...
WALLA WALLA -- The last time the Dayton boys basketball team won the district title, most of the current Bulldog globetrotters were still in diapers. The year was 1995. The 2012 team that beat the WP Cardinals by one point Monday night, 57-56, at Whitman College began to form almost that long ago when sports dads Dean Bickelhaupt, Greg Fullerton and Jeff Turner started dribbling with their sons Colton, Hayden and Garett in kindergarten. The likes of Kroft Sunderland, Joey Schlachter and Wyatt...
WALLA WALLA -- With a bit more than half a period left in the fourth quarter, the Lady Bulldogs came within six points of the lead in their game against the WP Cardinals. Then the margin grew again and The Dogs' hopes of un-seating the defending district title holders evaporated. The 2012 Cardinals defeated the Bulldogs, 45-33, in a feisty give-and-take, which the Waitsburg-Prescott team dominated for most of the evening. After all was said and done, the Cardinals remained as the top team of the district, but the second-place finishers' coach s...
WALLA WALLA - If a trey was worth four points, Cardinal Zach Bartlow's three-pointer that drained the net at the buzzer would have tied his team's game against the Dayton Bulldogs, forcing the battle over the district title into overtime. Instead, it fell one point short and the Bulldogs captured their first district crown in 17 years after beating their valley rivals, 57-56, at Whitman College on Monday. "Every time we play them (Cardinals), it's close," Dayton head coach Roy Ramirez said....
WAI T SBURG -- The genesis of Brian Seagraves' interest in cabinet making and wood working goes back to high school. When he was a junior at Nashua High School on the border between New Hampshire and Massachusetts, he took a shop class after getting burned out on being a drummer in the school band. "I had no background in running power tools," he said. But he soon learned he could be pretty meticulous with fine wood working projects that required precision. As a senior he won an Outstanding...
DAYTON -- The Dayton Chamber of Commerce, which serves businesses in Dayton and also has members in Waitsburg, has some new additions to its board, a development expected bring new energy and ideas to the organization. Scott Underwood, owner of PC Solutions on Main Street, and Stephanie Guettinger, manager at Columbia County Transportation, are replacing Dayton City Councilwoman Kathy Berg and Andie Holmberg from America West Bank. Both recently stepped down from the board. "Some new blood is going to really help," Claudia Nysoe, executive dire...
KITTITAS -- The WP Tigers' hopes for a showdown at the state wrestling tournament evaporated after they were knocked out of the regional competition in Kittitas last Friday, but by all measures the first-year program was a success, head coach Lanny Adams said after the big meet. "I couldn't be more proud of any of them," Adams said. "They gave it their best. Watch out next year. We're coming back with a vengeance." Wrestlers Gabe Escalante, Trent Kitselman and Dalton Larue participated in the re...
WAITSBURG -- Recalling the grace-under-pressure composure WP Cardinals Quarterback Zach Bartlow displayed in his team's climb to the title game last football season, it seems hard to believe that he was afraid of being a football player at one time. It was back in fifth grade. He was just a few days too old to stay with the Little Giants, the team he'd played for since third grade. So he became one of the youngest and smallest players on the Big Giants. "I was scared," he said, explaining that...
DAYTON - The best word to describe the Lady Bulldogs' playoff victory over Tri Cities Prep Tuesday night? Convincing. Dayton beat the Jaguars, 61-42, and will face Asotin in the districts semifinals at Whitman College in Walla Walla at 5 p.m. on Saturday. " It's a privilege to be where we are," freshman Lexie Ramirez said, crediting her coaches, Clayton Strong and Nikki Fullerton, with the team's extraordinary growth. "It's the best feeling in the world." The Lady Bulldogs are now 6-7 in league...
WALLA WALLA -- The way divo Morgan James sees it, putting four big guys with big voices and big egos on a stage together can be a recipe for disaster. But it doesn't have to be. It wasn't for the three classic opera tenors - Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti. And it isn't for the Four Tenors who are currently stealing the limelight at the Powerhouse Theater, James said. "We complement each other," he said. "We're very much a group of four strong individual singers. Everyone...
