NORTHWEST NOTES: Friday, Aug. 5, 2016

| August 5, 2016 9:00 PM

Lewis-Clark State women’s basketball

earns national

academic honor

ATLANTA, Ga. — After a season that saw the Lewis-Clark State women’s basketball team make their first trip to the NAIA Elite Eight since 2008, the Warriors also excelled in the classroom, finishing eighth in the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s NAIA Academic Top 25.

The Warriors have ranked in the Academic Top 25 in nine of the last 10 seasons, finishing as high as sixth following the 2008-09 campaign in which L-C had a team GPA of 3.53. This year’s team posted a 3.562 GPA, the highest in school history.

The team includes former area standouts Brooke Litalien (Post Falls), Caelyn Orlandi (Coeur d’Alene) and Brittany Tackett (Coeur d’Alene).

Mount Marty College topped the NAIA list with a 3.828 GPA with three other Frontier Conference teams, Montana State University-Northern (ninth), Carroll College (23rd) and University of Great Falls (24th).

The WBCA Academic Top 25 recognizes NCAA Division I, II and III; NAIA and junior/community college women’s basketball teams across the nation that carry the highest combined GPAs inclusive of all student-athletes on their rosters for the entire season. The 2015-16 season is the 21st in which the WBCA as compiled the honor rolls.

Eastern Washington to

open fall camp Tuesday

The Eastern Washington football team will begin practices for the 2016 season on Tuesday on the Sports and Recreation Center practice fields in Cheney.

Players will report on Sunday and Monday, then the team will practice together on Tuesday at 9:15 a.m. Eastern will practice in pads for the first time on Friday, Aug. 12 at 9:15 a.m., followed by its first of five days of two-a-day practices on Aug. 13. The Eagles are expected to exclusively use the practice fields through Aug. 17, after which Roos Field will be utilized leading up to the team’s Sept. 3 opener at Washington State, which will be televised live nationally at 5 p.m. on the Pac-12 Networks.

The Eagles will scrimmage twice before the team’s season opener. Eastern’s first scrimmage of preseason camp will take place Aug. 20 at approximately 9:45 a.m., and a second scrimmage will take place a week later on Aug. 26, also at about 9:45 a.m.

Both scrimmages are free and open to the public, and will take place on the red Sprinturf surface at Roos Field. Times and locations of practices and scrimmages are tentative and subject to change.