Tri-Cities sweeps top honors for girls swimmer, diver and coach of the year. Other honors

Pasco High senior Madison Edwards was named Mid-Columbia Conference Girls Swimmer of the Year by the league’s coaches.

Meanwhile, Kennewick senior Delaney Rush was named MCC Diver of the Year, and Hanford’s Jesse Grow is MCC Coach of the Year.

Edwards was listed on the first team in the 100 backstroke, and while Rush was the Diver of the Year, Richland junior Alice Williams was the first-team diver.

Other members of the first team are:

• Richland sophomore Shayla Asmus, 500 freestyle

• Southridge junior Jaylah Griffith, 100 freestyle

• Hanford sophomore Esther Mei, 100 butterfly

• Hanford senior Annika Peterson, 200 freestyle and 100 breaststroke; Peterson and Mei — along with sophomore Jorja Rainey-Gibson and sophomore Abby Schroder — combined for the first team in the 200 freestyle relay team

• Richland sophomore Brooke Posada, 50 freestyle; Posada and Asmus combined with senior Rylee Morris and junior Madalynn Norris to comprise the first team 400 freestyle relay team

• Walla Walla freshman Madelyn Smith, 200 individual medley; Smith — along with senior Abi Guest, junior Eliana Isenhower, and senior Miriam Hutchens — comprised the first-team’s 200 medley relay team

College baseball

Metro State in Denver, which plays in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, will have two players from the Mid-Columbia on its baseball team this spring.

Outfielder Brooks Rasmussen will be a redshirt junior for the Roadrunners. He played for Columbia Basin College two seasons ago.

Meanwhile, junior catcher Royce Vandine — who played for Chiawana High School before spending the last two seasons for Lower Columbia Community College — has transferred in.

College soccer

Nathan Alvarado, a former Kennewick High and Walla Walla Community College men’s soccer standout, has transferred from Lubbock Christian University in Texas to Northwest University in Kirkland.

Alvarado, a midfielder, will join Northwest U in the spring and will play competitively in the fall.

College signings

Kennewick senior Canaan Hays recently committed to play football at Carroll College in Montana beginning next fall.

Hays was a second-team selection at running back for the Kennewick Lions, who played into the Class 3A quarterfinals last month.

Hays rushed for 770 yards while splitting the touches with fellow senior running back Alex Roberts this season. Hays also scored 14 touchdowns for the Lions.

As a defensive back, Hays was one of Kennewick’s top defenders at defensive back with 35.5 tackles.

▪ Kamiakin’s Trent Woodhouse and Tommy Lamb have both announced they are committing to Whitworth University to play baseball.

Woodhouse just completed his prep career in football as the Braves’ quarterback. But the senior infield and pitcher will play college baseball.

Last season as a junior, Woodhouse hit .394 and had 14 RBIs.

Meanwhile, Lamb is an outfielder and pitcher for Kamiakin. Last season, he batted .350 with 12 RBIs and three triples.

▪ Chiawana senior infielder Gabrielle Garza, who was a Mid-Columbia Conference honorable mention selection last spring for the Riverhawks, has signed a letter of intent to play softball next year for Bushnell University in Oregon.

NWAC championships

Columbia Basin College will once again be hosting the Northwest Athletic Conference (NWAC) men’s and women’s basketball championships in March at Holden Court in the Student Recreation Center building on the Pasco campus.

But get this: the NWAC already has awarded CBC with another three-year contract for the basketball championships for the 2025-28 school years.

In addition, the NWAC awarded CBC to Elite 8 volleyball championship tournament for 2025-28.

CBC athletic director Scott Rogers had said when the new building opened a few years ago that the NWAC wanted the Hawks to host volleyball. But Rogers wasn’t confident everything would be ready for the volleyball tournament in 2023.

Now that the facility has successfully hosted basketball the past two years, Rogers and CBC are ready to hold both tournaments.

College football

When Jason Eck made the announcement earlier this month that he was leaving his position as the University of Idaho’s head football coach to take the job at the University of New Mexico, a number of Vandals football players made the move to enter the transfer portal.

Among those who did so were offensive linemen Ayden Knapik and Nathan Knapik.

The brothers, who are Kennewick High School graduates, ended up with some offers.

Ayden Knapik is a junior who was named first-team All-Big Sky Conference at left tackle. He has one year of eligibility remaining and has offers from Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico, San Diego State, Washington State and Wake Forest (before Jake Dickert left WSU).

Nathan Knapik, meanwhile, is a freshman with four years of eligibility remaining. He got offers from both New Mexico and WSU.

But when Idaho signed Thomas Ford to be its new head coach, Nathan decided to stay with the Vandals and withdrew from the portal.