Tri-Cities Water Follies still working toward fall racing — as long as area reaches Phase 4
Kathy Powell has been talking to the Pentagon and almost every branch of the service in recent weeks.
The event director for the Tri-Cities Water Follies is try to piece together the HAPO Columbia Cup for a spot later in the calendar year.
At its June 1 meeting, the Water Follies board elected to postpone the event from July 24-26 to sometime perhaps in September or October.
It is Powell’s job to put together an boat racing event, as well as an air show with military aircraft.
“I want to have an amazing community festival,” Powell said.
At that June board meeting, members decided to wait to make a final decision on the 2020 season until the next board meeting — which has been delayed because of the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
That gives Powell some more time to get things organized.
“I don’t know how many race teams we’d get,” Powell said. “But we’re so close to Seattle that I would think we’d get them. I know Charlie Grooms (of Madison, Ind.) has put a lot of money into his teams.”
It’s not clear — with all of H1 Unlimited’s other race events in Guntersville, Ala., Madison, Ind., Seattle and San Diego canceled for 2020 — on which teams would like to still get out on the water, and which teams have decided to bag the season completely.
As for the air show part, Powell has been in constant contact with the military, and they’re making many of their teams available. But some are on different weekends.
Being a pilot on one of these teams is an honor, Powell says.
“That’s a position you earn,” she said. “A lot of these positions are just for two years. The coronavirus has affected these guys too. Their performances have been cancelled. So they haven’t had a chance to perform.”
Because of that, Powell said it would possibly be the best air show we’d have.
“I have access to an F-35, an A-10, and an F-18 right now,” Powell said.
But here’s the thing: this area still has to be in a Phase 4 of Washington’s Safe Start policy for this event to happen.
Both Benton and Franklin counties are in a modified Phase 1.5. And the numbers put out by the health department aren’t looking good.
“So unless (the coronavirus) disappears altogether and we can get to Phase 4, I don’t know,” said Powell, who’ll continue to do her job these next few weeks before the rescheduled board meeting.
“We want to have a community festival that’s safe.”
College notes
• Fall sports at Yakima Valley Community College became a casualty July 1 when the school announced it would not have fall sports because of the coronavirus phase Yakima County is in.
When the announcement came, Yakima was in Phase 1 of Washington’s Safe Start policy, but now it has entered Phase 1.5.
But the county is nowhere near Phase 3 needed for workouts.
This affects volleyball and women’s soccer for YVC, and it doesn’t allow for workouts for men’s and women’s basketball.
Columbia Basin College is in the same phase as YVC, but CBC athletic director Scott Rogers says the school hasn’t made a decision yet.
“We’ll do what the health board and the state says we can do,” said Rogers, who was on campus taking students’ temperature screenings Thursday as they went to the library or had chemistry labs, engineering classes or manufacturing classes. “Our biggest consideration is our out-of-state students who have to sign leases. We’ve got kids coming from Hawaii, California and Nevada.”
Decisions on athletics should be coming in the next few weeks.
One thing that’s a possibility: community colleges could postpone fall sports, moving volleyball into January and February (sharing the gym with the basketball teams) and men’s and women’s soccer into the spring.
• Richland High grad Sydney Perryman, a true freshman, was used mainly as a pinch-runner for the South Dakota State softball team this past spring.
The team was 11-18 when the season was stopped because of the coronavirus.
• Walla Walla University’s men’s basketball team finished 7-23.
It had two local athletes — Zayne Browning (Walla Walla Valley Academy) and Noah Olsen (Liberty Christian) — on the 2019-20 roster.
Browning was second on the team in scoring (16.6 points) and rebounds (7.3), and third in assists (1.4). Olsen started 10 times as a guard, and averaged 2.2 points a game.
Golf roundup
The Central Washington Chapter of the PGA has been able to get up and running again with its pro-ams around the region.
So far there has been five events, with the next one set for July 20 at AppleTree in Yakima.
Through five rounds, Charles Holmes of the Yakima Country Club leads the professional division standings with 230 points.
Holmes has two wins in three events.
Right behind him is Clint Ables, the head pro and general manager at Zintel Creek Golf Club in Kennewick.
Ables has 225 points, and he has one victory in his four events.
In third place is Pasco Golfland’s Mike Kasch with 220 points, including one win in four events.
Kasch also leads the senior pro standings, where he has complied 68 points, and has three victories in four events.
Paul Cobleigh of Suntides in Yakima is second with 65 points (one win in four events), and Kelly DeShaw of Yakima Elks is third with 62 points (one win in four events).
The CWCPGA has not posted the top amateur standings yet on its website.
• Kamiakin grad Alexa Clark, a junior on the Eastern Washington University women’s golf team, made the Women’s Golf Coaches Association scholar team for the third consecutive season.
To make the team, a golfer has to carry at least a 3.5 grade point average and play in at least 50 percent of her team’s events.
Clark averaged a 75.6 score over her 15 rounds for the Eagles, as she played in every event.
Clark had four other teammates also make the list, giving EWU five. That tied the Eagles with Northern Colorado for the most out of the Big Sky Conference.
The WGCA named 1,401 athletes to the list from throughout the entire country.
Clark, an exercise science major, was an honorable mention Big Sky Conference selection this year too.