Vintage point guard Nicolis to be featured on TV show

By Marty James

NOTES AND QUOTES for a Thursday in the Napa Valley:

Jeremiah Nicolis, Vintage High School’s senior point guard, will be featured on Cal-Hi Sports Bay Area Sunday night. The show airs on Your TV20 (cable Channel 13) at 7 and 11 p.m.

“We’re featuring him as this week’s overcoming odds story,” said Kevin Thom, who works as a reporter for the sports show.

Thom, a 2000 Vintage graduate, majored in broadcast journalism and minored in communications at Syracuse.

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Pacific Union College forward Brandon Monty was selected as the California Pacific Conference Men’s Basketball Player of the Week for the dates of Feb. 9-16.

The Las Flores, Calif., native averaged 20 points, 3 rebounds and 1.5 assists in a 1-1 week for the Pioneers.  The Pioneers lost 79-78 to Simpson University in Redding and then won 69-59 over Cal State East Bay, the 2008-2009 CalPac regular season champion, in Angwin.

Other nominees were Adam Chavis of Dominican University and Logan Shoffner of Menlo College.

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Emily Talley started off the spring season for the University of Colorado women’s golf team, shooting rounds of 80, 83 and 78 and tying for 55th place at the San Diego State Aztec Invitational. It was played on the par-72, 6,187-yard Salt Creek Golf Course in Chula Vista, Calif.

Colorado finished ninth.

Talley attended Justin-Siena for three years and spent her senior year at Robert Louis Stevenson-Pebble Beach.

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Jordan Roualdes, a junior left-hander, is listed as the probable starting pitcher for Nebraska’s game Sunday at Louisiana-Lafayette. It’s the series finale between the two teams.

Roualdes, a Justin-Siena graduate, compiled a 5-1 record with a 3.13 ERA in 15 appearances at South Mountain (Ariz.) Community College last year, striking out 64 and walking 26 over 72 innings of work.

He was an all-state performer for coach Allen Rossi at Justin-Siena, going 11-0 with a 1.14 ERA, while also hitting .426 with two homers in 2004.

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Haylee Yepson of Napa achieved her best collegiate vault score of 9.475 for the Seattle Pacific women’s gymnastics team in a tri-meet at Illinois-Chicago’s PE Building last week.

Yepson, a freshman, also scored an 8.800 on the uneven parallel bars and a 9.00 on the balance beam.

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Art Spander of Oakland, who for nearly 50 years has been a fixture covering virtually all of the greatest events in sports, has been named the recipient of the 2009 PGA Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism.

Spander, 70, will be honored April 8 at the 37th Golf Writers Association of America’s Annual Spring Dinner and Awards Ceremony at the Savannah Rapids Pavilion in Augusta, Ga.

By his count, Spander has covered 120 major golf championships since 1960, when he began his journalism career as a news writer for United Press International in his hometown of Los Angeles..

He also has covered 33 of the past 34 Super Bowls, all Triple Crown events in thoroughbred racing, two decades of the World Series, the Final Four, the NBA Finals, three Winter and three Summer Olympic Games, the Indianapolis 500, Wimbledon and the U.S. Tennis Open.

In May 1965, Spander was hired by the San Francisco Chronicle, and a year later became a golf beat write..

The PGA Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism, first presented in 1989, honors members of the media for their steadfast promotion of golf.

E-mail Executive Sports Editor Marty James at mjames@napanews.com or call 256-2223.

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