Trio of
Cougs to embark on Polynesian Bowl in Honolulu week
Story from
Cougfan.com
Photo of Peni
Naulu, Gunner Cruz, Simon Samarzich from WSU
THREE
WASHINGTON STATE signees from the 2019 recruiting class will take part in the
Polynesian Bowl at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu next Saturday (Jan. 19, 5 p.m.)
But game week, in the lead up to the bowl, kicks off on Monday.
QB Gunner
Cruz (6-5, 227); LB Peni Naulu (6-1, 210); and long snapper Simon Samarzich
(6-0, 200) will be representing Washington State at the third annual Polynesian
Bowl. All three signed with the Cougs during the December early signing period.
Cougar
legend Jack Thompson is on the Polynesian Bowl’s organizing committee.
Related:
Key dates to know on recruiting calendar before Feb. 6 Signing Day
Cruz, who
started classes early at WSU this past week, completed 240-of-307 passes for
3,598 yards and 30 touchdowns against 5 interceptions at Casteel High in Queen
Creek, Arizona.
Naulu
won’t have to travel as far as the other two Cougars – he hails from Kapolei,
about 30 minutes from Honolulu. A quick linebacker, he was known for some
rim-rattling hits this past season.
Samarzich,
a rarity with the vast majority of long snappers starting as walk ons, has
played the position since he was nine-years-old. He is rated the No. 2 long
snapper nationally by both 247Sports and Chris Rubio.
::::::::::::
WSU MEN’S
BASKETBALL
Vince
Grippi of Spokane S-R says, “WSU: There isn’t a lot of excitement around the
Cougar basketball team right now, but it’s too early to label it a dumpster
fire – as is the case on Twitter – and move on. After all, Washington State
plays in the Pac-12, where anything is possible, it opened with three road
games, including a road swing that has never produced a victory, and it played
without its best player, the injured Robert Franks. Let the Cougars lose at
home first before you make a final determination. Oh, they lost 88-70 at Utah
yesterday. The Utes bounced back from a bad home loss to Washington.”
--Late
Rally Not Enough for WSU Men Basketball Cougars at Utah
--Freshman
CJ Elleby and Junior Isaiah Wade combined for 22 points in the final 12
minutes.
SALT LAKE
CITY (AP) Timmy Allen scored 15 points and collected nine rebounds while Both
Gach added 14 points to lead Utah to an 88-70 victory over Washington State on
Saturday night, Jan. 12 .
Charles
Jones, Jr. and Riley Battin each added 11 points while Sedrick Barefield and
Parker Van Dyke chipped in 10 apiece for the Utes. Barefield also dished out
seven assists.
Utah (8-8,
2-2 Pac-12) snapped a two-game losing streak and beat the Cougars for the 17th
consecutive time in Salt Lake City, dating back to 1946.
CJ Elleby
scored 21 points and Isaiah Wade added 12 to lead Washington State. The Cougars
(7-9, 0-3) have lost all eight games they have played outside Pullman this
season.
Washington
State's leading scorer Robert Franks missed his fourth consecutive game while
recovering from a hip contusion. The senior forward did not travel with the
Cougars to Boulder or Salt Lake City this week. Franks is averaging 22.1 points
and 7.9 rebounds per game for this season.
Without
Franks in the lineup, the Cougars looked lost on offense and fell victim to
multiple prolonged shooting and scoring droughts.
Utah took
a 11-5 lead on back-to-back layups from Gach after Washington State went nearly
six minutes without scoring a basket. Wade ended the drought with a jumper and
added a layup to punctuate a 6-0 run that tied it at 11.
Van Dyke
kept the Cougars from actually taking the lead. He drained a 3-pointer to put
Utah back in front. Then the senior guard stole the ball and took it in for a
dunk. Van Dyke's two baskets sparked a 15-0 run that gave the Utes a 26-11
lead.
Washington
State opened a door for the decisive run by missing eight straight shots and
committing three turnovers over a 4 1/2 minute stretch.
Utah came
out on fire after halftime to completely pull away from the Cougars. The Utes
scored baskets on seven straight possessions, culminating in a dunk from Jayce
Johnson, to take a 62-32 lead with 13:19 remaining. All seven baskets were
layups or dunks.
THE BIG
PICTURE
Washington
State: Turnovers and poor perimeter shooting doomed the Cougars on offense for
the second straight game. Washington State coughed up 13 turnovers, leading to
21 points for Utah and averaged 12.5 turnovers per game on its road trip this
week. The Cougars also shot just 5 of 24 from 3-point range after going 2 of 18
from the perimeter against Colorado.
UP NEXT
Washington
State hosts California on Thursday.
:::::::::::::::
WSU track
& field 2019 Indoor Season at UW Preview
January
12, 2019
Cougars
see Peyton Fredrickson take top spot in high jump to start the season.
From WSU
Sports Info
SEATTLE -
The Washington State University Track and Field program competed at the UW
Indoor Preview to begin the 2019 indoor season Saturday afternoon inside the
Dempsey Indoor Center on the UW campus.
Washington
State from the women's side saw great runs from Natalie Ackerley and Zorana
Grujic in the 800m event as Ackerley posted a third place finish with Grujic
close behind finishing fifth overall. The Cougars saw another top five finish
in the 4x400m relay as Jelena Grujic, Grace Victor, Ackerley, and Zorana placed
fifth overall with a time of 3:55.62. The day was capped off on the women's
team in the high jump where Suzy Pace and Madison Hagfors each posted top ten
finishes. Pace went on to finish sixth overall at 5-feet 7 inches (1.70m), and
Hagfors in tenth at 5-feet 3 inches (1.60m).
The WSU
men were led by Peyton Fredrickson in the high jump as he claimed the top spot
in the event at 6-feet 10 3/4 inches (2.10m). Fellow teammate Mitch Jacobson
followed up in the event in second overall at 6-feet 8 3/4 inches (2.05m). The
Cougars saw a pair of top ten finishes in the pole vault event as well as Troy
Gingerich placed eighth at 16-feet 3/4 inches (4.90m), and Jacob Englar
finished ninth at 15-feet 7 inches (4.75m). Paul Ryan helped anchor Washington
State in the 3000m race, placing 20th overall with a time of 8:14.13 in the
event.
:::
Cougars
See Impressive Start to 2019 Indoor Season at Bronco Invite
WSU Women Track
& Field claim top spot in six total events.
From WSU
Sports Info
NAMPA,
Idaho - The Washington State Cougar Track and Field squad kicked off the 2019
indoor season on the road at the Bronco Invite, hosted by Boise State
University at Jacksons Indoor Track Facility Saturday.
The
Cougars saw success all around during the first indoor event of the year, as
both the women and men's teams took home the top spots in multiple events
throughout the day. The WSU women saw a first, second and third place finish in
the finals of the 60m dash as Jordyn Tucker (7.58 seconds), Regyn Gaffney
(7.64), and Lauren Newman (7.77) led the way in the event. Charisma Taylor won
the 200m dash after posting a time of 25.34, and teammate Tierney Silliman
placed right behind Taylor in third overall at 25.82 seconds. The Washington
State dominance continued in the 400m dash as Ronna Iverson topped the race
with an overall time of 57.24. The women's 4x400m relay also saw Cougs taking
first place in the event as the team of Mackenzie Fletcher, Ronna Iverson,
Kristina Schreiber, and Lindsey Schauble posted an overall time of 3:57.20 for
the win. Finally WSU picked up two additional first place finishes as Charisma
Taylor won the long jump at 5.91m and Aoife Martin won the weight throw at
17.27m as well.
The WSU
men saw success as well on the day in Idaho, starting with Emmanuel Wells Jr.
winning the 60m dash at 6.72 seconds. Fellow Cougs Charles Johnson (7.00), and
Ethan Gardner (7.00) placed in a tie for third overall as well. Wells continued
to see success as he won the 200m dash also with a time of 21.42 overall. The
400m dash belonged to Washington State as Jake Ulrich placed first overall with
a time of 47.54 in the race. The Cougars capped off the success at Nampa with
junior Sam Brixey placing first overall in two events, in the long jump at 6.87m,
and in the 60m hurdles with a time of 7.94 in the finals.
:::::::::
Rep. Drew
Stokesbary (R-31st District) of Auburn, Wash., introduced legislation to allow
student-athletes enrolled in Washington’s colleges to earn compensation.
House Bill
1084, which wouldn't require college athletes to be paid but would allow them
to be compensated, isn’t likely to pass any time soon. But Drew Stokesbary's
passion for the idea is genuine. And Larry Stone is convinced he’s on the right
track.
By Larry
Stone Seattle Times columnist
Originally
published Jan 11, 2019 at 6:00 am Updated Jan 12, 2019 at 4:15 pm
When Drew
Stokesbary was in law school at Notre Dame and his fellow students would debate
the idea of paying college athletes, he was squarely in the “no way” camp.
Now a
state representative in Washington from Auburn, Stokesbary’s thinking on the
subject has evolved. In fact, it has flipped, to the point that the Republican
has introduced legislation to allow student-athletes enrolled in Washington’s
colleges to earn compensation.
House Bill
1084, which has been pre-filed for the upcoming Legislative session and will
likely be referred to the House Civil Rights and Judiciary Committee, isn’t
likely to pass any time soon. Stokesbary recognizes that. He’d be happy to get
a hearing when the Legislature convenes Monday. His goal, he says, it to
advance the conversation about amateurism, and perhaps pressure the NCAA into
changing its draconian rules. “Cartel-like” is the way he describes the NCAA.
After
talking to Stokesbary, the House Republican floor leader, I came away impressed
that his passion for the idea is genuine. And convinced he’s on the right
track. I’ve long been an advocate of compensating players in some way for the
$8 billion in revenue they generate for the NCAA. His plan is thought-provoking,
and he has pre-emptive answers for just about every concern you might come up
with.
Stokesbary’s
change in perspective, he said, came after observing the ever-growing amount of
money going to those on the periphery of college athletics – the coaches,
administrators and bowl officials. Meanwhile, the athletes themselves, who
generate the bulk of the revenue, are forbidden from receiving compensation.
“That
seemed unfair to me,” he said. “And I see more and more examples of the NCAA
trying to enforce rules in ways that seem increasingly arbitrary. As college
sports fans, we like the idea of a pure class of amateurs, but if we’re being
honest, we have to acknowledge it doesn’t exist now, and maybe never existed.”
He cites
two examples of those arbitrary rules. One is Kyler Murray, a professional
athlete on one hand (receiving a $5 million signing bonus from Major League
Baseball’s Oakland A’s) and the Heisman Trophy winner in football for Oklahoma
on the other. And swimmer Michael Schooling, who received a $750,000 bonus from
his native Singapore for beating Michael Phelps in the 2016 Olympics, remained
an amateur in the NCAA eyes and continues to swim for the University of Texas.
“It defies
common sense,” Stokesbary said. “Why can an athlete be paid by one governing
body and not another?”
The
distinguishing characteristic of Stokesbary’s proposal is that it doesn’t
require a school or any other party to pay college athletes, and thus doesn’t
threaten non-revenue sports (to anticipate one concern). It simply allows the
athletes to be compensated by any party for their services up to the
fair-market value of those services, and to retain an agent. Both are
prohibited by NCAA rules
To use
Stokesbary’s example, under his bill a shoe company would be able to pay a
University of Washington running back $50,000 to appear in a television
commercial. And if the NCAA or Pac-12 tried to prohibit such payment, it would
be a violation of the Washington State Consumer Protection Act and state
antitrust laws.
Could the
school itself pay athletes, if it so chose? Stokesbary is open to that. He
points out that non-athletes in college have the opportunity to find paying
jobs in their field, so why not athletes?
“The way
the bill is written, it’s intentionally very open-ended and permissive,” he
said.
Boosters,
he said, would be able to compensate athletes, but only in a reasonable fashion
related to the value of services provided. In other words, he says, a booster
could not write a prospect a million-dollar check, but Nike could write a
million-dollar check for an athlete to appear in a shoe commercial if it
routinely wrote million-dollar checks to others for a commercial.
“Let’s say
a big Tyee Club member at UW is an auto dealer,” he continued. “He couldn’t
hire (quarterback) Jake Browning to work a summer job. With this bill, it would
be possible, but he’d have to pay Jake Browning what he pays other car
salesmen.”
Stokesbary
believes that in such a system, premier athletes would actually stay in school
longer, because they no longer would feel pressure to turn pro to cash in on
their talent. That would enhance both the fan experience and their educational
experience.
Stokesbary
can hear you screaming, “But what about their scholarship? Isn’t that
compensation enough?” His counter-argument is that yes, it’s indeed valuable,
but if you are providing services that result in earnings that far exceed the
value of that scholarship, you should be able to get a share of it.
“There are
a number of people, high-profile cases, who are contributing to the university
and NCAA far more than the $50,000 value of tuition,” he said. “It seems kind
of unfair that at the end of the day, the people in charge get to say, ‘We’ll
keep all the money, and you don’t get any.’ “
Stokesbary
says as “one of the last Republicans left in King County,” this proposal is
consistent with his world view that favors a free-market system with government
out of the way. But to advance in the legislature, the bill would need
bipartisan support, and he believes it’s a concept Democrats can get behind as
well.
What do
the state schools think about this? Hard to say. I contacted Washington,
Washington State and Eastern Washington, and none made its athletic director
available for comment. A WSU rep did say that as a member of the Pac-12, “we
will still have to follow all conference and NCAA rules.”
Stokesbary
recognizes it would be difficult for our state schools to act as lone wolves,
even if they had the law behind them. Even if they could successfully fight a
sanction in court, would it be worth it if they had to forfeit games or titles,
even temporarily?
“They are
between a rock and a hard place,” he admitted. “They want to be competitive and
support students, but the NCAA has a lot of power. It puts them in an awkward
situation.”
In the
end, though, it’s good to have this conversation. We are inching toward the day when athletes get their fair
share of the revenue they create. This is another small step down that road.
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