Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
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DAYTON - Wi t h Tuesday's planned Asotin game canceled because of Monday night's rain storm that inundated the baseball field on Cottonwood Street, the Bulldogs are looking at Saturday's away game against TOR to shore up their 2-4 league record. Dayton's league standing took a hit when De- Sales beat the Dogs in a doubleheader last Friday. The Irish won the first game, 9-2, and the second game, 12-0. " They made some plays that kept us from scoring," Dayton head coach Sal Benavides said. "They're as good hitting team. I keep telling the boys th...
TOUCHET - Despite some opportunities during the sunny late afternoon ball game against Touchet, the Lady Bulldogs lost to the Indians, 8-2, Tuesday night. "Touchet is always a good team," head coach Terry Robbins said. "We came into the game a little down." Robbins said his starting pitcher for the evening, McKayla Bickelhaupt, reported sick and her backup, Sam Harting, wasn't mentally ready to take over, putting in a so-so performance that allowed Touchet some hard-line drives and outfield hits...
WALLA WALLA - Last week was a good one for the WP track team and for two of the members of Dayton's crew. The WP men placed first in the River's Edge meet at Milt Durant Field in Umatilla last Friday and first in the District 9 meet at Martin Field in Walla Walla last Wednesday. The Lady Cardinals placed second on Wednesday and fifth on Friday. Waitsburg-Prescott competed with 14 teams in the River's Edge meet and four teams at Martin Field. "We really had some good performances," WP head coach...
WALLA WALLA - "Dearer action is in virtue than in vengeance." Louisiana actor Johnny Lee Davenport, the spitting image of Samuel Jackson, quotes Shakespeare from "The Tempest," the classic Elizabethan play about betrayal, revenge, love and forgiveness that will open later this week at the Powerhouse Theatre in Walla Walla. It's the tragic comedy shipwreck adventure of Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan Davenport portrays in his search for redemption and vengeance and his ultimate discovery of...
WAITSBURG - It's Wednesday night. All is quiet throughout the tree-lined streets near Waitsburg's historic Bruce Mansion, except on the corner of Fourth and Orchard. You have to strain to hear it, but when you get closer to the home of Brian and Wendy Richards, the muffled thumps of the steady beat and bass notes emerge from somewhere underground. The weekly practice of the Frog Hollow Band, arguably the most popular country rock group in the Walla Walla Valley, is well underway. Down in the...
WALLA WALLA - A jury in Walla Walla late last week cleared an elderly Dayton man who hit and killed a Seattle cyclist last year of vehicular homicide. The not guilty verdict for Melvin Bohleen following his criminal trial in Walla Walla Superior Court Thursday drew praise from his attorney, who said the driver will nonetheless live with his regrets for the rest of his life. But the victim's surviving husband said in an interview last Tuesday night that he was disappointed with the outcome,...
WAITSBURG - - Most Waitsburgers know Mickey Richards as "Izzy's Dad." But what many don't know is that the affable owner of the town's iconic dromedary is as good a dancer as he is a camel handler. If you'd have set foot in Walla Walla's Heath & Co. (now Barnabees) in the 1980s, chances are you'd have seen Richards practice or teach the two-step, waltz, polka or any country dance routine as often as six days a week. "I practically lived there," he said. "It was a bad day when it closed." But...
PRESCOTT -- During the third inning of the WP Tigers' first doubleheader game against Asotin, a visiting Panthers fan proudly shared that his team had gone 15 innings without any scores against it. The Tigers took care of that with an impressive three-point roll in the 7th inning. But the well-executed attack wasn't nearly enough to take the sting out two disappointing league defeats to kick off the season for WP. The Tigers lost the first game, 9-3, and the second, 20-3. "In the end, it wasn't...
WAITSBURG -- T.J. Scott has been a basketball player and fan since he was about 4. So it should come as no surprise that the WP head coach follows the sport well beyond the high school season that just ended two weeks ago. But because of a nationwide pastime known as "brackets" he's been much more excited about March Madness as a spectator here in recent years. It's believed some $2.4 billion changes hands across the country each year between basketball and football playoff observers placing...
PRESCOTT -- After being rained out of several early games, the WP Tigers were eager to get into their first contest of the season last Saturday and did so swinging. The softball team won the first of its doubleheader games against Asotin, 8-2, and came close to beating the Panthers in the second game, leaving only three points on the table, 8-11. "I'm not disappointed at all with that," head coach Angie Potts said. "I saw really good things." WP opened the scoring right off the bat with a run in...
DAYTON - Columbia County Health Systems Chair Ted Paterson fully expected the hospital board's retreat this Thursday to be about budgets, the recent rural hospital conference in Spokane and .CEO Charlie Button's contract renewal. But Paterson and other board members set the retreat agenda before Button resigned from his post on March 10, so now the five-member body that governs the public health district for Dayton and Waitsburg will have a new priority to discuss: finding Button's replacement. "It's not going to happen overnight," said...
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 -- Bulldog softball head coach Terry Robbins has a soft approach to starting the season with his team. "I don't push them too early in the season," he said. His group of girls includes a number of basketball players coming off a successful come-from-behind season that propelled them to second place in district. Instead, he wants his players to relax, have some fun and remember that softball is still only a game. "If success doesn't come, we can still say we had a great year," he said....
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...
