Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
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SPOKANE, Wash-Lewis-Clark State College senior and Waitsburg High School grad Owen Lanning and fellow Warriors Madi Carson and Jenny Sapp qualified for the national meet at the Sam Adams Classic track and field meet in Spokane on Fri., March 22. Lanning earned his spot after placing second in the decathlon with a total score of 5,934. In 2017-18 Lanning was a national qualifier for the Indoor Heptathlon and Outdoor Decathlon. The Warriors compete next in Spokane on April 5 and 6 for the WAR...
The Waitsburg Mat Birds welcomed 400 wrestlers into Waitsburg last Saturday when they hosted a Little Guy Wrestling tournament....
WAITSBURG-There will be plenty of activity in Waitsburg this weekend when the Waitsburg Mat Birds play hosts for a Washington Little Guy Wrestling Tournament on Sat., March 23. About 400 wrestlers and their families are expected to attend the event. The Waitsburg Mat Birds were started by Travis and Kari Newman and Laura and Bill Brown in 2006. Kids ages five through 14 are able to compete with other wrestlers around the region. The 2019 season, under the direction of head coach Jake Winona and...
A column by Eric Umphrey #9 Washington (26-8) vs. #8 Utah State (28-6) in Columbus, Ohio, Fri. March 22 at 3:50 p.m. on TNT. Washington’s loss to Oregon in the PAC 12 tournament finals likely cost them a slightly higher seed in the tournament despite not having won against a top 20 team all season. Normally, the team with the best record coming out of the PAC 12 would be favored over any team out of the Mountain West Conference but the PAC 12 has been weak this year and Utah State had a top 2...
DW Track Coach Dan Nechodom gave a "big shout out" to Dayton High School facilities staff Jim Gallaher, for spending much of lastFriday clearing snow off the track so the team could practice. "We managed to get in 5 to 7 reps of about 80 m, dodging remaining patches of snow and ice, before we all got too cold," said Nechodom in a Facebook post. Read a DW Track and Field update on Page 9....
This is part five in a series of articles I’m writing to introduce new statistics that baseball announcers are using in broadcasts. Weather willing, I’ll be back to covering local spring sports next week. Today’s statistic is Wins Above Replacement. WAR is by far the most popular of the newly-created statistics because it attempts, in a single number, to add up all aspects of a player’s value to his team. I’m covering this one last as I needed to first introduce Park Factor (Part One), BsR...
WALLA WALLA – The 2019 Community College Baseball season in Walla Walla brings with it a change of leadership as Justin Speer takes the helm from Dave Meliah who has assumed duties as assistant to Athletic Director Jeff Reinland. Meliah, a Desales and Walla Walla Community College alumni, originally took over for Mike Cummins and served for nine seasons as Head Coach and eight years as an assistant. . Spear's wife, Chelsea, is the Women's Volleyball coach at WWCC. The couple moved here in the f...
DAYTON/WAITSBURG/PRESCOTT - Several local basketball players received league winter sports recognition. Player of the Year went to Prescott senior Joze Gonzalez who also made the Southeast 1B boys all-league team. In the Eastern Washington Athletic Conference, D-W senior, Chris Andrews, earned a place on the boys second team while D-W sophomore Sadie Seney made the girls second-team....
DAYTON-WAITSBURG – Track and Field has about twenty athletes participating in 2019, according to seventh-year Head Coach Dan Nechodom. "We have a pretty equal split between boys and girls, and we are still getting a few late turnouts," Nechodom said. Nechodom was eager to share his enthusiasm at some of the 2019 prospects. "I think this will be Aliyah Picarella's year to shine. She made it to district the last two years, and I think she may go all the way on this year," he said. Picarella is a...
DAYTON/WAITSBURG – Softball Head Coach Shane Robins loses four very valuable pieces from last year’s State tournament qualifying team. Megan Robins and Hannah Becker were both two-year All-Conference players who graduated last spring. Heidi Dobbs was also lost to graduation and Shelly Castoini opted not to play this season. However, the second-year coach does still have some pieces in place. Tatumn Laughery was a standout All-Conference player as a junior centerfielder. This year, her athleticism and experience have moved her to shortstop. Fil...
WALLA WALLA – Part of the dream for many junior college baseball players is to earn an opportunity to play high-level amateur baseball in the summers in a league such as the West Coast League. For three Walla Walla Community College Warrior players that dream became reality on Jan. 25 when Walla Walla’s own hometown Sweets signed pitchers Brayden Hirai and Michael Peterson, along with outfielder Brandon Wagstaff. In the case of the two pitchers, they both return for a second season with the Swe...
ASOTIN – The AAU BirdDogs ended their season in a back-and-forth win-loss series at the Asotin Hardwood Classic Tournament last weekend. The Dayton-Waitsburg team got off to a good start to win their first game against the Clearwater Valley Rams 46-21 before losing to Kamiah 26-42. They were back in the contest with a 39-26 second win against the Rams in the semifinal game. They ultimately lost the championship game 33-46 to Kamiah, to take second place in the tournament. Monte Pettichord r...
DAYTON/WAITSBURG – Typically, in early March, people associated with Spring sports find themselves either complaining about, or at the very least, verbally expressing their desire for warmer spring weather. But this year is more extreme than usual. Thus far, practices have been held in the indoor temperatures of gyms and multi-purpose rooms. Track and softball facilities at Dayton High School, the baseball facility in Waitsburg and the Touchet Valley Golf Course are still covered by 6-8 inches of snow. “We are utilizing indoor facilities whi...
A column by Rob Holtzinger The pair of August days Billy and I had waded the Touchet River in old tennis shoes, starting by the baseball-softball fields of Dayton High School and exiting the stream just before the Main Street bridge, seems more like a couple months passed, than the half year of days gone by. Fond of walking down the gravel bar in the middle of the river, ankle deep, Billy, my twelve-year-old son and I, cast to the deeper water, ironically right off the bank, holes swirl two to t...
A column by Eric Umphrey This is part four in a series of articles introducing the new statistics that baseball announcers are using in broadcasts. Today's statistic is Ultimate Zone Rating which is used to measure a players defensive skill. UZR only started being recorded in 2002 so we don't have data before then. This statistic is provided by a company called Sports Info Solutions. They actually hire people to watch every defensive play in baseball and give it a rating. It looks to pay fairly...
BEND, Ore. - Instead of wintering somewhere warm, 16-year-old Waitsburg resident Amy Farley spends her winters based in Wenatchee where she competes competitively with the Mission Ridge Ski Team. Farley has been racing competitively since age 8, when she joined the Bluewood Alpine Race Team. These days, she spends November through April, living with friends in Wenatchee while taking Walla Walla Community Courses online and hitting the slopes in between. "I like that it's an individual sport and...
This is part three of a series of articles I’m writing to introduce some of the newer statistics announcers are using in baseball broadcasts. Last time I covered BsR. This time I’m going to explain wOBA. It’s pronounced (whoa-bah) and it stands for weighted on base average. Weighted run average might have been a better description since it assigns run values to events based on the number of runs that event produced. An example might make this clearer. In 2018, the average number of runs that...
TACOMA, Wash. – Dayton Bulldog wrestler Carlos Norris found himself bypassing regionals and heading directly to state competition when snowstorms across the state made roads unsafe and resulted in the WIAA canceling the regional elimination round of wrestling competitions. Instead, the WIAA added an additional round to the finals at the Mat Classic XXXI wrestling tournament at the Tacoma Dome on Feb. 15 and Feb. 16. Norris, a junior, competed at state last year where he took fourth place in the...
COLFAX, Wash. – After being forced into the Southeast 1B playoffs loser bracket with a 57-45 loss against Oakesdale on Feb. 9, the Prescott Tigers boys basketball team extended district play with a 66-44 win over Pomeroy on Thurs. Feb. 14. The Pirates looked hot at the bell, dunking two treys in the first minutes of the game. Prescott quickly retaliated, ending the first half with a 27-23 lead. The Tigers continued to play hot and ended the game with a 68-44 win. Jose Gonzalez scored a game h...
This is part two of a series of articles I’m writing to introduce some of the newer statistics announcers are using in broadcasts. Last time I covered Park Factor and how it affects hitters. This time I’m going to discuss BsR. BsR is a base running statistic created by Fangraphs. I’ll get the formula out of way and then breakdown the components. BsR = wSB + UBR + wGDP wSB stands for weighted stolen bases. It estimates the number of runs a player contributed to or took away from his team by st...
Special to The Times by Brad Trumbo WALLA WALLA – Pheasants Forever is known as "the habitat organization," and the Walla Walla Chapter, Blue Mountain Pheasants Forever, upholds the mission. Make that two missions. Habitat enhancement and youth involvement in the outdoors are the two primary focuses and programs for the Chapter. In 2018, the Chapter maintained its staple projects to include an 88-acre grassland restoration site near Touchet, and a shrub-steppe restoration site just north of W...
SEATTLE, Wash. – If you’ve been following the MLB baseball hot stove you’ve probably noticed how busy the Mariners have been. General Manager Jerry Dipoto has been having a fire sale and everything must go. Over $200 million in guaranteed salaries have already been moved. The contracts that have come back in trade are expiring either in 2019 or 2020. In 2021 the bulk of that money is going to two players: Kyle Seager and newly acquired pitcher Yusei Kikuchi. Per Cots baseball contracts here...
OAKESDALE - The Prescott Tigers boys' basketball team dropped their first game in the district playoffs to Oakesdale, 45-57 on Monday night in spite of being tied 25-25 at halftime. Prescott's Jonathan Cardenas brought in 17 points for Prescott. The game pushed the Tigers into the losers bracket where they will play a loser-out game against the Pomeroy Pirates in Colfax on Wed., Feb. 13....
COLTON – The Prescott Tigers are playoff-bound following a 66-47 win against Colton here on Feb. 2. Prescott took control of this game early on with a great first half by Jose Gonzalez and Jonathan Cardenas who combined for 25 points. The game tightened in the 3rd quarter when Jon Bean cut the lead to seven at 44-51 with 4:33 left in the quarter. The score would get no closer and a big fourth quarter by Fernando Lopez put the game out of reach with a 14 point outburst. After the game, I spoke w...
DAYTON – The DW girls were overpowered by DeSales 46-21 at a Senior Night home game on Jan. 29. The game ended DW's season 1-12 in league and 2-18, overall. "The DW girls had a fantastic first half of play against DeSales. We took care of the ball fairly well, played tough defense and were only down 5 at the break. During the first minutes of the third quarter we gave up the ball several times allowing the Irish some easy lay-ins. We started chasing and trying to play catch-up instead of r...
