View at the top: Grandview boys handle Toppenish, sit alone in first

GRANDVIEW, Wash. — The latest in Grandview’s seemingly endless line of mercurial point guards had already celebrated the Greyhounds’ latest ascension to the top of the CWAC standings.

 

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But like the stellar guards before him who built the tradition — like Phillip Candanoza, architect of the 2002 Class 2A championship, and two members of Grandview’s current coaching staff, Roy Garcia and Stephen Sanchez — Isaiah Ruiz has a knack for the big moment.

In the final seconds of the game, the sophomore floor leader had already given a celebratory hug to senior teammate Kiki Mendoza, whose first-half deluge of 3-pointers had ignited the Greyhounds to their 72-50 thrashing of Toppenish.

Then Ruiz punctuated it.

He ripped down the rebound of the last of the Wildcats’ 17 errant 3-pointers, dribbled the length of the floor at sprint speed and drove in for a lay-up — drawing a foul to boot for the three-point play — with just a second left.

It was an apt finish to a game that put Grandview (13-2 CWAC, 13-4 overall) a game in front of Toppenish (12-3, 13-4), and one the Greyhounds had been eager for since losing in overtime at Toppenish last month.

“Big time,” Ruiz said of his team’s anticipation for the rematch. “It was the intensity we came out with tonight.”

Although the Greyhounds have three CWAC games remaining — including a big one at Wapato tonight — they knew what it meant to win this showdown of league co-leaders. And they also clearly expected to win it.

“It’s basically the tradition here. We gotta keep it going,” said Ruiz, who finished Friday with 24 points and six assists. “We can’t let the seniors down.”

One of those seniors, of course, was Mendoza, whose three 3-pointers in the first quarter helped the Greyhounds to an early 19-11 lead in a game Toppenish never led. After the Wildcats scratched back to within 19-17, Mendoza’s fourth trey ignited a 13-7 run. By the time Grandview scored the first 12 points of the third quarter, the outcome was already no longer in doubt.

“(Mendoza) shooting like that, it opens up everybody else,” Ruiz said. “When he’s hitting, I’ll keep feeding him the ball until he misses, and when he does (miss) he’s gonna be getting the ball to somebody else anyway.”

But while Grandview finished with four players in double figures — Isaiah Gonzalez (13 points) and Sal Escobedo (12) joining Mendoza (15) and Ruiz — the sophomore point guard was clearly the man of the hour.

“He’s had some growing pains, but he’s got a great work ethic,” said Garcia, the Greyhounds’ head coach. “He’s got a nose for the basketball. He’s one of those kids who just wants to win … and who knows how to win.”

Garcia, though, wasn’t issuing sappy praise to his players in the locker room. To the contrary, he wasn’t pleased to have watched Toppenish — which got 15 points from Shannon Isadore and 11 from Wesley Williams — rally from a 50-30 deficit to within 11 points with 3 1/2 minutes remaining.

“Don’t get me wrong, Toppenish is a great team,” Garcia said. “But we’re at a point where we’ve got to cut down our mental mistakes. We did some good things, but we’ve got to work on our mental focus and play for 32 minutes. We knew they’d make a run, but it’s all in knowing how to handle it when they do.”

In the end, though, Grandview knew precisely how to finish.

And Ruiz provided the exclamation point.

Looking for a hunter ed class? Now?

YAKIMA, Wash. — Since the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has gone to strictly online registration for its hunter education classes, some local classes aren’t filling up nearly as fast as they used to. Classes that used to fill up within a day after the old routine — announcing them in the local newspaper with a phone number to call and schedule — are coming and going with room to spare.

Case in point: There’s a hunter ed class beginning Saturday in Selah taught by experienced pro Lance Cussons, and as of 3 p.m. Thursday there were still seven spots remaining. That just never happens, and typically a young prospective hunter hoping to get into one of these mandatory classes has to plan well in advance.

So if you’re looking for a class, here’s where you can sign up. That link will take you to the calendar page, and if you want to join the class beginning Saturday, just click on that date and go from there. You’ll also find a Kittitas County class beginning Feb. 16 and another Yakima County class, taught by Dave Pittman, that will get under way on Feb. 20. (There are two other classes starting that same day, so don’t be confused; just click on the date and make your selection.)

Oh, and if you’re a hunter ed instructor wanting to let folks know you’ve got a class coming up, you can always still call your local newspaper to get the word out. We still do that sort of thing.

– Scott Sandsberry

Road to Tourneytown: It’s up for grabs in Class 1A

YAKIMA, Wash. — Of all the teams who have a legitimate shot at winning the Class 1A boys state title this year, probably the least likely candidate would be the King’s Knights.

When Rick Skeen took over the coaching reins of the Seattle private school following the 2010-11 year, the team’s two leading returning scorers promptly transferred out of King’s.

“I guess they didn’t want to finish second,” cracks Skeen, who had coached back-to-back-to-back Class 2A state runners-up teams at Burlington (2008-10) before losing in the semifinals last year. “Some people even call me the Marv Levy (who coached the Buffalo Bills to four straight Super Bowl losses) of high school basketball … I guess there are worse things to be called.”

At a glance, the Knights, who play five freshmen in their top nine, shouldn’t be a serious 1A title contender. Neither, perhaps, should Cashmere’s girls, a team that went 7-15 last year and hasn’t even reached the state tournament since 2006.

But the Bulldogs are unbeaten and, based on common opponents, have actually been more impressive than top-ranked (and also unbeaten) Freeman, the shoo-in favorite that lost only one senior off its 2011 championship team.

That’s what will make the 1A state tournament, set for March 1-3 at the SunDome, such a basketball junkie’s jewel this year: Unlike years when prohibitive favorites seemed destined not for a challenge, but for a coronation march, the 2012 tourney is wide open.

Especially on the boys side.

 

BOYS: IT’S ANYBODY’S GUESS

With a month left in the run-up to the final eight, there are at least eight teams with a legitimate shot at making a title run. Maybe more. Perhaps remarkably, one of them is King’s.

The Knights (16-2) have decent size (6-4, 6-4), have dropped only two one-point losses to 3A and 2A teams with a combined 24-9 record, and in Skeen have a coach who produced one overachieving team after another in his 11 years at Burlington. But he’s also realistic about the Knights’ chances.

“We’re relying heavily on five freshman kids. I’m starting two right now and I probably could be starting four. I just don’t know that that’s a recipe for postseason success,” Skeen said. “The thing is, I know we can (win), but our margin of error is pretty small.”

Top-ranked Cashmere (14-2) has some length (6-5, 6-5), has lost only at No. 4 Granger and by two points at Okanogan, a defeat the Bulldogs avenged with a 19-point victory. Cashmere’s best player is 6-5 Cooper Elliott, whose versatility makes him a nightmare matchup.

“He can pop from anywhere, he runs like a deer, he can get up and down the court, and he can flash (to the basket),” says Cashmere coach Keith Boyd. “If you put a big on him, he’s going to pull that big away from the basket, because he likes to shoot the ball.”

Cashmere also managed to edge No. 2 Bellevue Christian (12-3), which can put on the floor a front line going 6-8, 6-4, 6-3 and which under coach Mike Downs has been a perennial contender for the last decade.

The Vikings, in turn, own a one-point victory over two-time defending champion Cascade Christian (12-5), which has gone from a guard-oriented team to one boasting a 6-9 post, Shawn Spencer, who’s scoring 13 ppg and a guard, Jake Archer, who has averaged 19 points over the last three games as the Cougars wind into postseason form.

The SCAC West, meanwhile, may be the strongest it’s ever been from top to bottom, insuring that No. 3 Naches Valley (16-2), No. 4 Granger (15-3), No. 7 Zillah (14-2) and unranked but capable Goldendale (11-4) are all battle-tested.

But none of them, perhaps, has a player to match up with the guy who might well become the best player in the 1A state tournament — Lynden Christian junior Isaac Reimer, a 6-7 forward who, like Cashmere’s Elliott, can play inside or out and is a threat to triple-double on any given night.

 

GIRLS: THE WHO’S WHO

It seems ludicrous to imagine anyone hoisting the championship trophy but Freeman, when one considers these credentials:

• The Scotties have won back-to-back titles and won their last nine state-tourney games by an average score of 51-31.

• Under feisty young coach Ashlee Nimri, Freeman plays a stifling brand of defense, having allowed none of those nine opponents more than 37 points over that stretch. Only three opponents in the Scotties’ 20-0 run this season have scored so much as 40 — a total the Scotties themselves have reached or exceeded all 20 times.

• Their average margin of victory this season is 24 points.

• They have 11 of their 12 players back from last year’s state champs.

Why, then, shouldn’t the WIAA simply ship the trophy to Freeman now and save everybody else the cost of a Yakima hotel? Because, well, because Castle Rock is 17-0 in the Southwest; Cascade Christian (15-1) is on a tear; La Salle (14-2), Granger (14-3), King’s (15-2) and Okanogan (14-4) are all well-conditioned to state-tournament pressure; and because Cashmere simply can’t be overlooked.

The Bulldogs (17-0) share two common opponents with Freeman. They won by 38 over Cheney, which lost to Freeman by just seven; and won by 30 over Lake Roosevelt, which came within 11 points of Freeman.

Cashmere is little; outside of 5-11 sophomore Corine Turner, the Bulldogs have nobody taller than 5-9. But they have seven players capable of scoring in double figures, have had six different leading scorers, have tremendous passing (with 21- and 19-assist games) and, on defense, wear opponents down with a withering full-court press.

“We’re getting a lot of steals; (opposing) teams kind of wear down against us,” said Cashmere coach Chris Cloakey. “It’s not always on the press — the kids have good anticipation. I think we make a lot of mistakes and our speed makes up for it.”

Still, Cloakey says Freeman — who the Bulldogs figure to meet in the Caribou/Northeast regional — remains the team to beat. “We definitely don’t seem like we’re unbeatable, that’s for sure,” Cloakey says. “We know we have a lot to work on to get better.”

And not much time — just 29 days until the SunDome state openers — to make it happen.

Several fish-run predictions are plenty optimistic for 2012

YAKIMA, Wash. — One year after sport fishermen pulled out a record number of hatchery spring chinook salmon from the Yakima River, state fish managers and the people who predict fish runs are cautiously optimistic for an even bigger year in 2012.

Some of them, anyway.

While the NOAA Fisheries Service has predicted a mainstem Columbia River run of 160,000, the state and tribal representatives on the U.S. vs. Oregon Technical Advisory Commission (TAC) are significantly more optimistic.

TAC’s forecast of 314,200 upriver springers would be the fourth-largest on record, meaning the popular Columbia and tributary spots so popular with Yakima-area anglers — like Drano Lake and the mouths of the White Salmon and Klickitat rivers — may be even busier than usual.

As for the Yakima, things could be really good … or even better than that.

“The forecast is for 12,040 fish, and of that, 5,680 are the Cle Elum hatchery fish. That’s a good return,” said John Easterbrooks, regional fish program manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. “The (2011 spring chinook) forecast was lower than that — it was 10,320 — and we ended up with 13,400 adults to the mouth of the Yakima.”

Thanks in part to the popular Boundary Reach bordering the Yakama Reservation being open for last year’s spring chinook fishery, sport anglers on the Yakima River reeled in 1,579 hatchery-origin adults and jacks. That harvest was the highest on record, exceeding even the 2001 season when a phenomenal run of 21,220 to the Yakima resulted in a 1,252-hatchery fish catch — a total which wasn’t exceeded until last year.

And the 2012 run to the Yakima could easily surpass the 12,040 prognostication, much as the 2011 forecast did, said Bill Bosch, data manager for Yakima Klickitat Fisheries Project.

“There’s some reason to be optimistic that we’re being nicely conservative,” Bosch said. “Things could come in better than forecast.”

Bosch’s reasoning is based on some changes he’s made to his forecast model for the Yakima River.

Previously, YKFP forecasts gave greater credence to jack abundance, but Bosch noted that “over the last 10 years or so, the jack counts haven’t quite panned out as a strong predictor. There’s been some years where we’ve ended up with egg on our faces after having these optimistic prognostications and then the actual runs have come in much lower than expected.”

Beginning in 2010, Bosch began giving greater weight to such factors as smolt estimates at the Chandler facility at Prosser, juvenile survival estimates for natural and hatchery-origin fish from Roza to McNary and ocean conditions. Using all of those factors, Bosch said, would call for a projected return of 16,790 age-4 spring chinook and 1,260 age-5 fish for a total return of 18,050 adult springers to the mouth of the Yakima.

Given the unpredictable relationship of jack counts to age-4 returns in recent years, though, Bosch’s prediction model for the 2012 run took into account the average over-forecast errors of recent years and came up with the 12,040.

But, of course, that 18,050 number is still out there as a possibility. Better to be conservative and be pleasantly surprised, Bosch said, than predict a great year and then be disappointed by a good year.

“It’s a lot harder to cut fisheries back if you overforecast,” Bosch said, “than it is to expand them if you underforecast.”

The 314,200 forecast for upriver spring chinook in the Columbia far surpasses the 2011 projection of 198,400, and the lower river is already open to boat and bank anglers on a daily basis from Buoy 10 near the mouth upstream to the Interstate 5 bridge.

Under the new rules adopted last week, the sport fishery will expand March 1 upriver to Beacon Rock, where it will run through April 6 except for three Tuesday closures (March 20, March 27 and April 3) to accommodate commercial fisheries.

The Columbia will open to boat and bank anglers above Bonneville Dam on a daily basis March 16 through May 2.

Harvest guidelines on sturgeon fisheries in the lower Columbia will entail a 38-percent reduction from last year, with this year’s catch being limited to 9,600. This reduction follows 30- and 40-percent reductions in each of the last two years, in response to a decline of nearly 50 percent of legal-size white sturgeon since 2003.

Yakima County Farm Bureau opposes state’s wolf plan

YAKIMA, Wash. — As far as Mark Herke is concerned, the occasional cougar was bad enough. He’s lost cattle on his Ahtanum ranch in 2005, 2007 and 2010 — a bull and a cow the first year, a calf in each of the latter two, each time killed by a cougar.

But a cougar, he said, “is happier to get the deer.” And it hunts alone.

Wolves are pack hunters. “That,” Herke said, “is a hellacious tool.

“This wolf is not going to be a game-changer. It’s going to be game over.”

That’s why Herke and the other members of the Yakima County Farm Bureau last week came out in opposition of Washington’s state wolf management plan, thus echoing the sentiment of Okanogan County commissioners who last summer petitioned to remove all protections from the state’s wolves.

The farm bureau’s press release said the state’s elk fences would enable wolves “to trap and slaughter” large numbers of elk. “It seems ironic,” the release went on, “that we, as tax payers, paid to have elk introduced into this area, paid to have the wildlife fences built, pay to feed the wildlife, and now are paying to have wolves eat the wildlife.”

The state also pays hunters — by way of landowners’ damage permits — to keep elk from gorging on private croplands. That’s how a hunter and his 9-year-old son had an intriguing Nov. 26 encounter with the Teanaway wolf pack roaming the hills of northwest Kittitas County.

Don Wood of Kent was hunting on an antlerless elk permit on a friend’s property off Teanaway Road when a wolf approached within 20 yards and watched them for quite a while.

“It came up to a bush that the leaves had fallen off of, so it was just kind of sticks and we could see it,” Wood said. “It was staring directly at us for probably a good three or four minutes.”

Wood said he was fascinated but, with his rifle in his arm, was not afraid, “just cautious. My son was standing right beside me; I told him, ‘Look, it’s a wolf.’ He was like, ‘Whoa.’ We didn’t really say much because wanted to be quiet.”

Eventually the wolf trotted off, and Wood’s son, Kenny, walked over to look at its tracks. After a couple of minutes, though, four other wolves — one of which wearing what appeared to be one of the state’s radio-collar units — approached from the same direction.

“I was telling (Kenny) to stop, and I went over to him because he didn’t realize what was going on. At that point, I was a little more concerned,” Wood said.

Still, though, he was more curious than nervous, and instead of raising his rifle, he raised his smart phone to take some photographs of the wolves until they ambled off.

“I had the phone in one hand and the rifle in the other,” Wood said. “(The wolves) stayed spread apart. I think they were coming down looking for breakfast and trying to determine if we were breakfast or not. At the time, I was alert and just trying to assess the whole situation, wasn’t really concerned. A couple of days later, at home in my bed, I was got to thinking, ‘Hey, that really could have gone the other way.’”

Herke, the Yakima County Farm Bureau member, is concerned about what will happen with greater number of wolves in the state. Though the Washington Farm Bureau and the Washington State Sheep Producers have come out in support of the state’s wolf management plan, Herke calls the plan’s goal of 15 breeding pairs “an unsustainable number” and said some YCFB board members would prefer to see no wolves whatsoever in Washington.

“But we’re way past that point now,” he said. “That horse is out of the barn.”

Washington’s wolf population is at least 27 now, including three breeding pairs, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s year-end survey of the state’s five confirmed wolf packs.

“That (wolf number) is a minimum. We know there are other wolves,” said WDFW spokesperson Madonna Luers. “I can’t tell you how many phone calls I’ve taken since that (survey) went out, and it’s always, ‘We’ve got more wolves.’”

Seven of them are believed to be in the Teanaway pack, roaming the rolling hills of northwest Kittitas County. That pack has yet to be involved in any livestock predation, though several pack members feeding on the carcass of a female sheep — killed by a cougar — injured a shepherd dog belonging to the Martinez family sheep-ranching operation based in Moxie.

The state paid for the dog’s veterinary bills; $650 was also paid to the owner of a calf killed by wolves in Stevens County in 2007, the lone verified case of domestic livestock predation by wolves in Washington so far. At that time wolves were still federally endangered in Eastern Washington and Defenders of Wildlife had a program to compensate for livestock losses to wolves.

Now, the state’s compensation money comes from $30,000 in an account funded half by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and half in matching funds from Defenders of Wildlife — a circumstance that Washington Cattlemen’s Association vice president Jack Field called “a conflict of interest.”

“The folks who are funding this do not share the same goals the livestock producers have in wanting to manage and control problem wolves,” Field said. “It is (the state’s) responsibility, not some outside entity’s responsibility, to fund it.”

But not all private landowners around the state, even those in rural areas, are particularly averse to the wolves’ arrival. Typical of that response is that of Dan Studley, one of the property owners on the land Wood was hunting when he and his son encountered those several members of the Teanaway pack.

“(The wolves) came on their own. They weren’t planted,” Studley said. “I look at them like the bear and the cougar and the elk and everything else around us. They’re just wildlife. I don’t oppose them at all. If they became a problem and (state officials) had to trap some and movement, then they’ll do that.

“I just don’t see that they’re going to impact our lives that much.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect the correct year, location of and circumstances surrounding the state’s only verified livestock kill by wolves.

Wapato gets going, rallies past Selah

WAPATO, Wash. — To watch Shawn Craig and Ozzie George in the open court on a Wapato fast break is to watch two tentacles of the same voracious beast.

Craig’s smooth passing and George’s aerobatic slashes through the lane have carried Wapato to nine victories in 13 CWAC games, including Friday’s 67-53 come-from-behind triumph over Selah.

 

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When the two are in the open court, leading another of the Wolves’ seamless fast breaks, they look as if they know each other’s every move — almost as if they share the same skin.

Six months ago, though, they could barely stand to share the same court.

“When me and Shawn first met, we didn’t like each other at all,” said George, an athletic, 6-foot-2 senior who moved to Wapato last summer from Vancouver, where he had attended Evergreen High but never played organized scholastic basketball.

“It’s like we were battling each other all the time, each of us wanting to be the guy to lead the team. And he was already the guy,” said George, who scored 20 of his game-high 24 points in the second half as Wapato finally put the upstart Vikings away. “I think we both finally realized we were on the same team. And we both wanted the same thing.”

“I just want to win,” said Craig, a junior point guard who dished out a career-high 11 assists to go with his 15 points. “Who’s scoring doesn’t matter to me, as long as we find a way to win the game.”

The Wolves (9-4 CWAC, 10-5 overall) this season have gotten solid play inside from Marcus Guevara (14 points and seven rebounds on Friday), who plays less like the freshman he is and more like his older brother Matt, a former all-CWAC standout. And they can count on the long-range, 3-point daggers from Gabby Patterson (who hit two against Selah), Adam Vela and Hank Strom.

But when their transition game is in full operation, it usually means Craig is finding George with the pass at just the right time.

“That’s what Shawn has, he’s got such a great knowledge of the game,” first-year Wapato coach Sean Laddrout said. “He understands the game more than most high school kids. He creates plays and finds just the right passing angles, especially with Ozzie out there. He’ll find Ozzie, and he knows Ozzie is going to finish.”

George, who also pulled down 14 rebounds, capped one of the Wolves’ fast breaks with a thunderous dunk, and scored five straight Wapato points during a 9-0 run early in the fourth quarter that put the Wolves on top for good. That helped offset a stiff challenge from Selah (4-9, 5-10), which got 21 points from Cody Roberts and an 11-point, five-assist night from Chris Weeks.

“The Roberts kid really gave us fits,” Laddrout said. “We kind of overlooked Selah, and they came out very aggressive, very hungry. Everybody’s trying for those district spots, and I was worried about them coming out that way.”

The Vikings came out precisely that way. But the Wolves — usually in the form of a Shawn Craig pass to Ozzie George in the lane — were the ones doing the finishing.

Yakama Nation closes Boundary Reach to anglers

YAKIMA, Wash. — Rule-breaking anglers certainly don’t like it and even some law-abiding fishermen may not like it, but state fisheries biologists are quite pleased with the Yakama Nation’s decision to close to sport fishing the stretch of the Yakima River that borders the reservation.

For years, tribal and state fisheries and enforcement officials have been alarmed about the number of winter and early-spring anglers that, while ostensibly fishing for whitefish, have reeled in and in some cases illegally harvested steelhead.

“Our enforcement guys watched it, and in some cases if people thought they could get away with it, they would keep steelhead,” said John Easterbrooks, regional fish program manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“You really couldn’t write a ticket when somebody caught and released a steelhead, because they could say they were fishing for whitefish and caught a steelhead. ‘We let it go, so no harm no foul,’ that kind of thing.”

But if enforcement officials weren’t around, some anglers were keeping those steelhead, which in the Mid-Columbia are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

The worst violators, say state and tribal officials, typically congregated in certain deeper pools where the steelhead would hold up — like those at the confluence of the Toppenish and Satus creeks —before heading up into the tributaries to spawn.

“We were having problems with anglers there using non-whitefish-type gear and really targeting steelhead,” WDFW biologist Eric Anderson said. “It’s been a problem issue for us, but we couldn’t do anything about it because the tribe has it open.”

But the tribe, which has governance rights for the Yakima River in the so-called Boundary Reach, where it borders the reservation, was already quite aware of the problem.

“The reports (of illegal steelhead takes) have been coming in for a few years now,” said Roger Dick Jr., harvest manager for Yakama Nation Fisheries. “Even some of our field crews, when they were out doing their surveys, they were seeing some of these things and reporting it.”

So on Dec. 27 the tribe instituted a closure to all sport fishing — for any species — that would continue through the end of April. To have its own rules mirror the tribe’s, the WDFW closed the river to all fishing from the Granger bridge to the I-82 bridge at Union Gap. That closed up the only other area in the river considered a problem will illegal steelhead harvest, just below Parker Dam.

And while those actions will protect the steelhead from illegal harvest or accidental mortality, they aren’t making whitefish anglers happy.

“There’s not hundreds of them, but there’s more than a handful,” said Yakima guide/outfitter Gary Fairbanks. “I’ve probably got 20 customers that like to go fish down in that area. Then just up and close it — we buy a fishing license and then a reservation (fishing) permit and then they shut it down on us. That’s what my customers are complaining about.”

Fairbanks said, though, some anglers in the Boundary Reach were clearly targeting steelhead — even if just for catch-and-release — instead of the whitefish, which was the reason they were supposedly fishing in the first place.

“A lot of guys go down there to catch whitefish and use the legal equipment to catch steelhead,” “They’re just releasing them; they’re not doing anything wrong. They’re using a whitefish fly and a maggot, but steelhead like those.”

With the closure, of course, tribal and state enforcement officers won’t have to try to figure out whether anglers are stretching the legal or ethical limits.

“That issue has been put to bed,” Easterbrooks said. “Anyone fishing down there now is in violation of tribal rule and state rule. There’s no ifs, ands or buts.”

Annual bird count delivers ‘firsts’

YAKIMA, Wash. — Birders are all about firsts — the first time they’ve seen a particular bird anywhere, or the first time in their state, or the first time that year, and so on. And considering that the Yakima Valley Audubon Society has been Christmas Bird Counts for more than a quarter-century, those firsts are getting harder to come by.

But yes, the volunteers on last month’s annual exercise in seeing what birds were out and about in the county over a single weekend — Saturday, Dec. 17, in Yakima, and Sunday, Dec. 18, in the Toppenish/Lower Valley count — did in deed rack up some firsts.

A snowy owl, spotted on the Yakima Training Center, became the first of that species to be seen in the Yakima count. So was a red-naped sapsucker espied in a tree on Naches Heights.

Kerry Turley was surveying bird species on the Yakima Training Center with another volunteer, Bill Drenguis, when he saw something white in the distant sky.

“I was just scanning the skyline and saw this owl fly across the sky,” recalled Turley, who compiles the Yakima Audubon Society’s Bird Alert feature that runs weekly in the Herald-Republic. “I was only going by flight pattern to know it was an owl, because it was a pretty good distance away and it just looked like a big white bird.”

But Drenguis and Turley were both excited about the possibility of it being a snowy owl, so they headed in the direction they’d seen the bird flying. “It was on our radar because (snowy owls) have been seen out there (on the training center) in the past when there have been irruptions of snowy owls.”

The birders’ hustle was rewarded when they saw the snowy owl — which, based on its color and size, was an adult — sitting on a rock, ignoring the harassing efforts of a northern harrier that apparently wanted the area for itself.

Three volunteers saw the red-naped sapsucker — a woodpecker distinguished by the bright red on its neck and the back of its head — in the Naches Heights area. The find was such a rarity at this time of year — these birds typically having migrated south before the end of October — that only when volunteer Kevin Lucas’ digital photos were sent to and verified by a renowned sapsucker expert in Colorado was it determined the group had added a new species to the count’s all-time list.

“That is the cool thing these days,” said Denny Granstrand, who organized the Yakima count. “So many people are carrying digital cameras and have the ability to take good photos, so you can see a bird like this and be able to know for sure what you’ve seen. In the past you wouldn’t have been able to confirm what you saw, especially in the case of a rare sighting, and in this case Kevin got good pictures so (the Colorado expert, Steven Mlodinow) was able to verify it.”

There wasn’t quite as much avian excitement on the Toppenish count, although a group of eight redheads — a species not seen on the Toppenish count since 1998 — was spotted, and other volunteers spotted a northern goshawk and a flock of 25 savannah sparrows.

Toppenish count organizer Luke Safford, though, had a little unexpected and unwelcome excitement when one of the wheels on his Chevy Suburban came off in mid-afternoon, a good seven hours into the day’s birding efforts.

“The lugnuts had gotten loose and the whole sucker came off,” said Safford, who had a couple of volunteers in the vehicle at the time. “I was going about 40 (mph) and it just came off. Luckily a guy came by, pulled over and back around. He worked at the Sunnyside Tire Factory, by chance, and he helped me put it all together. That was awesome.”

In all, the volunteers on the Yakima count chronicled 90 species and 17,477 birds, while the Toppenish totals were 81 species and 25,080 birds. Not surprisingly, the most populous bird species was European starling, with nearly 6,000 counted over the weekend.

 

2011 species count totals

Yakima count listed first,

Toppenish second

CW: Seen count week, not count day

Pied-billed grebe (16, 20); American bittern (0, 1); Great blue heron (40, 39); Tundra swan (0, 3); Greater white-fronted goose (2, 0); Cackling goose (10, 13); Canada goose (1,721, 722); Snow goose (CW, 1); Wood duck (148, 0); American green-winged teal (71, 155); Mallard (929, 10,078); Northern shoveler (15, 3); Northern pintail (0, 10); American widgeon (197, 14); Gadwall (23, 0); Redhead (0,8); Ring-necked duck (24, 1); Lesser scaup (14, 7); Hooded merganser (79, 3); Common merganser (84, 36); Common goldeneye (71, 0); Barrow’s goldeneye (1, 0); Bufflehead (9, 0); Duck, species undefined (80, 1); Double-breasted cormorant (2, 0); Bald eagle (10, 9); Northern harrier (20, 47); Sharp-shinned hawk (20, 8); Cooper’s hawk (10, 9); Northern goshawk (0, 1); Red-tailed hawk (108, 124); Rough-legged hawk (2, 3); Golden eagle (2, 0); American kestrel (102, 116); Merlin (6, 2); Peregrine falcon (1, 1); Prairie falcon (4, 5); Gray partridge (0, CW); Ring-necked pheasant (17, 14); California quail (700, 225); Chukar (CW, 0); Virginia rail (10, 4); American coot (41, 49); Killdeer (11, 13); Wilson’s Snipe (2, 1); Ring-billed gull (2, 0); Rock pigeon (665, 542); Eurasian collared-dove (121, 105); Mourning dove (152, 417); Barn owl (6, 1); Western screech owl (3, 3); Great horned owl (10, 5); Snowy owl (1, 0); Long-eared owl (1, 0); Northern saw-whet owl (1, 0); Anna’s hummingbird (2, 0).

Belted kingfisher (18, 14); Red-naped sapsucker (1, 0); Red-breasted sapsucker (1, 0); Brown creeper (2, 0); Downy woodpecker (104, 14); Hairy woodpecker (1, 1); Northern flicker (218, 146); Horned lark (3, 118); Black-billed magpie (366, 250); American crow (58, 19); Common raven (41, 85); Black-capped chickadee (189, 28); Red-breasted nuthatch (10, 0); Canyon wren (0, 7); Bewick’s wren (63, 25); Pacific wren (3, 3,); Marsh wren (4, 10); Rock wren (3, 0); Golden-crowned kinglet (12, 2); Ruby-crowned kinglet (71, 29); Townsend’s solitaire (1, 0); American dipper (1, 0); Varied thrush (30, 7); Hermit thrush (3, 1); American robin (316, 203); Northern shrike (3, 7); Western scrub-jay (16, 0); European starling (4,162, 1,762); Cedar waxwing (99, 86); Bohemian waxwing (2, 0); Yellow-rumped (Audubon’s) warbler (199, 138); Yellow-rumped (Myrtle) warbler (1, 14); Orange-crowned warbler (CW, 0); Spotted towhee (29, 11); Savannah sparrow (0, 25); Fox sparrow (4, 2); Song sparrow (187, 162); Lincoln’s sparrow (0, 3); White-crowned sparrow (386, 932); Golden-crowned sparrow (69, 71); House sparrow (1,391, 561); Dark-eyed (slate-colored) junco (3, 2); Dark-eyed (Oregon) junco (1,077, 551); Red-winged blackbird (201, 1,965); Brewer’s blackbird (186, 1,370); Yellow-headed blackbird (0, 2); Blackbird, species undetermined (500, 2,200); Western meadowlark (0, 31); Brown-headed cowbird (0, 13); Purple finch (4, 5); House finch (1,554, 1,213); American goldfinch (303, 174); Pine siskin (18, 0); Ringed turtle dove, exotic (0, 1).

Yakima count totals: 90 species, 17,477 birds.

Toppenish count totals: 81 species, 25,080 birds.

Toppenish bests rivals

Win over Wapato keeps Wildcat boys atop CWAC||

WAPATO, Wash. — As rivalries go, it doesn’t get much better than Wapato-Toppenish.

“In high school basketball, this is probably as close as you can get to that Tobacco Road thing. — kind of like Duke and North Carolina being right down the road from each other, having that great rivalry,” said Toppenish assistant coach Jay Sanchez. “Here you got Toppenish and Wapato, six miles apart, right down Highway 97 from one another. There’s lots of history there. We kind of make each other better.”

For nearly two decades, though, the rivalry has pretty much been Wapato-Toppenish, not the other way around, with the Wildcats usually nipping at the Wolves’ heels in the standings but never quite getting a good bite.

Not so this year.

After the Wildcats’ 54-49 come-from-behind road victory Friday night, Top-Hi finds itself alone atop the CWAC standings at 8-1 (9-2 overall), for what Sanchez thinks may be the first time this far into the season since the league’s inception in 1997-98. The current Wildcats were still pre-schoolers then, but not long after that they began building the foundation for what they’re doing now.

“We’ve been playing together since we were really young,” said senior forward Sal Godino, whose game-high 15 points included a pair of big free throws with five seconds remaining and Toppenish nursing a tenuous one-point lead. “We’re all like brothers. Like family. We have that connection there.”

But while the Wildcats’ rise has largely been built around the sharp-shooting, quick-handed guard play of Shannon Isadore (11 points, five assists), Kyle Jamison (10 points) and Randy Isadore, Godino was the lynchpin on Friday.

His three-point play — on an assist from Shannon Isadore — late in the third quarter cut into a 39-32 Wapato lead that matched the largest lead of the game. His transition layup — also on an Isadore assist — with 1:46 remaining pushed Toppenish out to a 50-45 lead, and his free throws at the end clinched the victory … especially when Isadore’s backcourt steal and buzzer-beating layup sent the visitors into a frenzied celebration.

“He finally stepped up,” Isadore said proudly of Godino. “He hasn’t been playing the way he used to. He’s been kind of timid — he hasn’t been the kind of kid I grew up playing with. Tonight, he was more aggressive, attacking the basket like he used to do.”

The Wildcats’ edge over Wapato (5-3, 6-4), though, was as slender as could be. Shawn Craig, who led the Wolves with 11 points and seven assists, missed a potential game-tying 3-pointer with 10 seconds to go that nearly forced overtime. Marcus Guevara and Trevor Shavehead also scored 11 points each for Wapato, which took a six-point lead into the fourth quarter.

Then Wesley Williams scored six fourth-quarter points for the Wildcats, whose victory put themselves firmly into an unfamiliar position.

Now they want to stay there.

“It’s like we tell the guys, it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” Sanchez said. “But … hey, I think we’ve truly got a team here.”

TOPPENISH — R. Isadore 5, Kyle Jamison 10, Shannon Isadore 11, Pacheco 3, Sal Godino 15, Williams 8, Piper 2, Whalawitsa 0. Totals 23-51 4-7 54.

WAPATO — Trevor Shavehead 11, Vela 7, George 6, Shawn Craig 11, Diaz 0, Marcus Guevara 11, Patterson 0, Strom 3. Totals 19-57 5-10 49.

Toppenish 13 13 11 17 — 54

Wapato 13 14 16 6 — 49

3-point goals: Topp 4-11 (Jamison 2-5, R. Isadore 1-3, Pacheco 1-1, S. Isadore 0-2), Wap 6-25 (Craig 3-9, Shavehead 1-8, Vela 1-2, Guevara 1-2, Strom 0-2, Patterson 0-2). Rebounds: Topp 30 (Godino 5), Wap 40 (George 14, Guevara 6). Fouls: Topp 15, Wap 8. Fouled out: None. Turnovers: Topp 11, Wap 13. Assists: Topp 16 (S. Isadore 5, Godino 4), Wap 12 (Craig 7).

About charging to see elk feeding …

 YAKIMA, Wash. — It seems as if everybody I talk to these days wants to give me a piece of their mind the state’s new requirement that, in order to watch the elk at one of the Oak Creek Wildlife Area’s elk-feeding stations, spectators’ vehicles must display either a Discover Pass or a current WDFW access pass.

(The WDFW pass is issued along with the purchase of a hunting or fishing license; the 2011 passes are good through March, which would almost certainly be later than the last elk feeding. The winter has been so mild and the snow so sparse that the elk haven’t even come down near the Oak Creek headquarters near the 410/12 “Y” and there has been no feeding yet this season.)

It’s not surprising the average Joe on the street doesn’t like the new pay-to-watch deal. Nobody like having to pay for something they used to enjoy for free. But this morning I happened to be talking to former Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission member Bob Tuck, and he waded in on the issue.

And no, he doesn’t like it, either.

“It’s an awful thing,” Tuck said. “In an era when we need to do all we can to connect people to wildlife, that was one of the few activities left that was free, where a person of modest means who doesn’t hunt or fish can go see some wildlife.

“To charge them is so detrimental to the future of wildlife and fish in this state, I can’t believe they’re doing that.”

It wasn’t a decision made locally, said Oak Creek Wildlife Area manager Ross Huffman. “It was decided in Olympia, after the (law creating the) Discover Pass, and that’s how they interpreted it.” (They, he said, were basically the WDFW’s lands division manager, Jennifer Quan, and wildlife division manager Nate Pamplin.)

Huffman says he won’t be out there issuing tickets to people who don’t have their Discover Pass or WDFW access permit showing. “If people ask questions about ‘Is it required?’, I’m going to inform them, but as far as enforcing it, I’m not going to. That will be up to the enforcement officers.”

And will they be enforcing it? If they’re there, sure. But, Huffman said, “I can’t see them just sitting in the parking lot and issuing tickets when people pull in. There’s a lot of other higher priority things to do.”

As far as Tuck is concerned, enforcing the requirement of any fee-costing pass — a Discover Pass runs $30 annual pass ($35 including the fees related to purchase) or $10 ($11) for a daily pass — should be on the lowest priority.

Said Tuck, “Everybody should be able to agree on and say, ‘OK, you guys screwed up, and we need to back off on this one.’ “

– Scott Sandsberry

 

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