Category Archives: Basketball
Tuesday scoreboard: Brewers, Linx and Reign victorious
Puget Sound Collegiate League baseball
Tumwater Brewers 7, Olympia Athletics 4
West Olympia Linx 8, Hawks Prairie Cardinals 2
Tanner Marty (Lower Columbia CC) went 3-for-4 with an RBI single in the third inning and a two run homer in the seventh in the Tumwater Brewers’ 7-4 win over the Olympia Athletics in game one at The RAC. The Brewers pounded out 13 hits including a 3-for-5 night from Spencer Dodd (Saint Martin’s) and a 3-for-3 night from Josh DeVaughn (Olympic College). Dodd drove in two runs and scored twice and DeVaughn scored three runs in the win.
JJ Nazzaro (Gardner-Webb) hit a two run home run of his own in the seventh inning and Joe Crunkilton (Western Nevada) and Kameron Banister each collected two hits for the A’s.
In game two, CJ Bader (Freed-Hardeman) hit a solo bomb in the third inning and Danny Flahie (Dakota State) and Zack Larsen each collected a pair of RBIs in a 8-2 West Olympia Linx win over the Hawks Prairie Cardinals. Connor Atchison (Centralia College) and Ryan Snyder (Oregon Tech) combined to hold the Cardinals to just three hits on the night.
International Basketball League
Olympia Reign 161, Nippon Tornadoes 117
Today (6/11): Reign return; PSCL doubleheader
International Basketball League
Olympia Reign vs. Nippon Tornadoes – SPSCC gymnasium – 7:00 PM
The Olympia Reign are back…at least for two games. The Reign are sitting out the 2013 season after losing the Little Creek Casino (and consequently their home court at the Skookum Creek Events Center) as a sponsor but are still part of the IBL as what they call a “Branding Team”. Basically, they are a way to fill out the Nippon Tornadoes schedule this season. The Reign will face the Tornadoes tonight and again on Thursday, June 20th again at SPSCC. No word on what the Reign roster will look like but expect a handful of locals on the court tonight.
Puget Sound Collegiate League baseball
Olympia Athletics vs. Tumwater Brewers – The RAC – 5:00 PM
Hawks Prairie Cardinals vs. West Olympia Linx – The RAC – 7:30 PM
Clippers basketball, Geoducks volleyball make head coaching hires
Two days, two new coaches for Olympia area college teams.
On Tuesday, South Puget Sound announced the hiring of Aaron Landon as the Clippers’ head men’s basketball coach. And on Wednesday, Evergreen announced that Angela Spoja was hired to the long vacant position of head volleyball coach.
Aaron Landon comes to the SPSCC from Concordia University in Portland, where he has been an assistant for the past two seasons. The native of Davis, California was responsible for recruiting in California, where he was an assistant coach at Marina High School and assistant at Santa Monica College before moving to Portland. In his time at Concordia, the Cavaliers went 29-30. Landon played basketball at the University of La Verne and Monterey Peninsula College.
Landon’s head coaching duties are combined with a full-time position as an educational planner for SPSCC. He takes over for Curtis Norwood, who resigned after the season, and will have to replace 56 points from departing sophomores on a team that went just 4-21 last season and given the fluid nature of community college rosters from year to year, he will probably have to bring in a whole new team.
This is Landon’s first head coaching job, but he is a young guy that has some experience recruiting in the Northwest in his time at Concordia and has contacts in California that could help him land some out of state talent that seems to be the key to success in the NWAACC these days.
Meanwhile, at Evergreen, Angela Spoja is one of the most accomplished coaches the Geoducks have hired in a very long time. Spoja spent eight seasons at Tacoma Community College where she was named NWAACC coach of the year three times and went undefeated in 2007 and 2010. She also oversees operations for the South Sound Volleyball Club in Tacoma.
Spoja has a tough job ahead of her trying to turn around a moribund program that went 0-46 over the last two seasons under Greg Spector and Geoduck volleyball has gone just 44-203 since 2001. Can Spoja make Evergreen attractive to volleyball players? For a variety of reasons, volleyball just isn’t a good fit as a sport for Evergreen but I think her experience in the community college ranks will help her draw more local transfers to the program and could yield some good players from the NWAACC. She also has strong roots in the local volleyball scene and will have better success recruiting in local high schools.
The Geoducks’ volleyball season starts in just a few months on September 6th.
Saints hire Ostlund as men’s basketball head coach
Micheal Ostlund is the new head men’s basketball coach at Saint Martin’s, the school announced today.
Ostlund, an assistant for the Saints under Bob Grisham from 1997-2002, spent five seasons as the head coach at Snow College, a two year school in Ephraim, Utah before resigning before the 2012-2013 season. He led the Badgers to an 83-73 record in his time at Snow, a member of the Scenic West Athletic Conference, one of the toughest junior college conferences in the counrty. He had his best season in 2011-2012 when his team went 23-9.
The stint at Snow was Ostlund’s first head coaching position after assistant stints at Salt Lake Community College, Saint Martin’s and Weber State. He graduated from Weber State and played two seasons for the Wildcats.
Ostlund replaces Keith Cooper, who wasn’t retained after ten seasons as the head coach of the Saints. He becomes just the third head coach at Saint Martin’s in 26 years. Current athletic director Bob Grisham coached the Saints for 16 years before turning over the reigns to Cooper.
The Saints will return 11 players next season from a team that went 10-16 overall and 6-12 in conference play, missing out on the playoffs that they hosted. Ostlund will have to replace the team’s two leading scorers, Roger O’Neill and Eric Taylor, and longtime, steady point guard Brady Bomber. But they have a solid, senior led core with forward Rei Jensen, guard Evan Coulter and center Matt Dodson returning from the starting lineup. Sophomore Will Bond exploded late in the season when he joined the starting lineup following an injury ended Dodson’s season.
Curtis Norwood out as SPSCC men’s basketball coach
After their second four win season in three years, the South Puget Sound men’s basketball program is looking for a new head coach.
Curtis Norwood, the Clippers’ head coach for the past three seasons, is no longer with the school. Oly Sports has not been able to confirm whether he was fired or resigned, but he is no longer listed as the head coach on the SPSCC athletics website, did not participate in the end of season awards dinner and a player confirmed that he will not be coaching next season.
The Clippers won just four games in Norwood’s first season at the helm in the 2010-2011 season but followed it up in 2011-2012 with a 12-16 season including 8-8 in the west region and a playoff birth. After a slow start, that team caught fire behind the breakout season of Anye Turner. But Turner moved on to Western Washington after his freshman year and despite featuring three solid scorers in Jamey Smith, AJ Fuller and Scotty Ewing, the Clippers again fell to just 4-21 this season.
Norwood came to SPSCC after his second stint as assistant women’s basketball coach at Evergreen. He coached the River Ridge girls from 2007 to 2009 and led the Hawks to a state title in 2008 and was the girls head coach at Centralia from 2004 to 2007.
Another one bites the dust: Olympia Rise relocate to Tacoma
Fresh on the heels of the Olympia Reign’s announcement to forgo the 2013 season, the Olympia Rise, a semi-pro basketball team competing in the ABA, announced today that they will be leaving Olympia and will compete as the Tacoma Rise next season. Here is the statement from their Facebook page…
“March 15, 2013 – Olympia, WA – After some long thought, research, and approval from the league, the Olympia Rise has decided to move the team to Tacoma. Evergreen State has been a gracious host and an awesome court to play on. But, due to majority of our players coming from the north and many of our supporters traveling south to see the games. We believe the team may be more successful in Tacoma and everyone would not have to travel so far to see us play. On April 13th, we will travel to the PacNW Championships in Salem representing Olympia. In the next few weeks we will be making some changes and transitioning from the Olympia Rise to the Tacoma Rise.
For those south end supporters that has followed us this year, we do appreciate you and hope that you will still follow us north.
More info coming soon! The Olympia Rise finished our (inaugural)regular season at 6-8. We are headed to the PacNW tourney as the #2 seed. Not bad for our 1st year! Stay tuned…”
The move of the Rise comes as no big surprise. General Manager Chris Reynolds told me before the season that they originally wanted to play in Lakewood but were beaten to the punch by another owner that eventually started the Lakewood Panthers. Without the home they wanted, they had to scramble to find another available market and settled on Olympia. But the Rise practiced in Tacoma, had their fundraiser dinner in Tacoma and for all intents and purposes were a Tacoma based team except for their name, logo and home venue.
Honestly, I cannot say that losing the Rise to Tacoma is much of a loss. They made no attempt to really be a part of the Olympia market, drew small crowds and were generally anonymous in the Olympia area. Most people would be surprised they even existed.
Also, given the ABA’s extremely poor track record in other cities, it’s remarkable that the Rise will leave Olympia without doing any damage. They will leave with the bills paid, assuming Evergreen got paid for the gym rental and no major sponsors or ticket holders left behind because of their move.
What is disappointing is that yet another semi-pro team comes and goes from the Olympia landscape without ever really giving an effort to promote or ingratiate themselves to this city or attempt to develop any kind of following. Will there ever be somebody in Olympia that can actually operate a minor league franchise? That remains to be seen.
I personally know someone that can or at least will give it everything he has to be successful: he can be reached at olysportsblog@gmail.com.
Sunday scoreboard: Saints drop pair of twinbills; Sabres stop Rise
College baseball
Montana State Billings 10, Saint Martin’s 1
Montana State Billings 5, Saint Martin’s 3 – Recap from SMUSaints.com
College softball
Western Oregon 6, Saint Martin’s 2
Western Oregon 4, Saint Martin’s 3 – Recap from SMUSaints.com
American Basketball Association
Salem Sabres 122, Olympia Rise 114
Today (3/10): Saints baseball hosts Yellowjackets; Rise home finale
College baseball
Saint Martin’s vs. Montana State Billings (DH) – SMU Baseball Field – Noon
American Basketball Association
Olympia Rise vs. Salem Sabres – CRC Gymnasium – 4:00 PM
Today (3/9): GNAC Championship games; Saints doubleheaders
Four of the best Division II basketball teams in the country will take the court tonight at Saint Martin’s with the GNAC men’s and women’s tournament championship on the line.
In game one, the top seeded Western Washington women take on second seed Simon Fraser in a matchup between the #6 and #10 teams in the country. The Clan are led by GNAC player of the year Nayo Raincock-Ekunwe while the Vikings feature a balanced attack led by Britt Harris. The two teams split their season series. Tip off is set for 5:15 PM and can be seen on Root Sports.
Game two features the #2 and #3 ranked teams in the nation in Western Washington and Seattle Pacific. Western Washington swept the season series but the game on February 2nd between the two teams was an instant classic that eventually saw the Vikings pull ahead in overtime for the win.
Both teams are very similar with a lot of outstanding players. Western features GNAC player of the year John Allen while GNAC defensive player of the year Riley Stockton will more than likely blanket him for Seattle Pacific.
Olympia grad Alex Weber-Brader came off the bench to give the Falcons a much needed boost of energy in the semifinals game and Black Hills alum and former SPSCC Clipper Anye Turner’s length off the bench for the Vikings disrupted anything Alaska Fairbanks brought in the middle in their semifinal game.
Tip is scheduled for 7:30 and can be seen on Root Sports.
The SMU campus is a busy place today. Not only does it host the GNAC championships but there are a pair of diamond doubleheaders. The Saint Martin’s baseball team and softball team takes on Montana State Billings starting at noon.
Today (3/8): GNAC semifinals all day; High school baseball underway
GNAC women’s basketball tournament
#2 Simon Fraser vs. #6 Seattle Pacific – Marcus Pavilion – Noon
#1 Western Washington vs. #5 Northwest Nazarene – 2:15 PM
GNAC men’s basketball tournament
#2 Seattle Pacific vs. #6 Central Washington – Marcus Pavilion – 5:15 PM
#1 Western Washington vs. #4 Alaska Fairbanks – Marcus Pavilion – 7:00 PM
High school baseball
North Thurston vs. WF West – The RAC – 6:00 PM
Oly Sports 