Leyden’s Johnson lifts Elmhurst
A pair of Bluejays took flight …
Senior guards Ocean Johnson (Leyden) and John Ittounas (Stevenson) each scored 16 points with a respective 9 and 8 rebounds in Elmhurst College’s 68-64 win Feb. 24 over regular-season champion Illinois Wesleyan to win the College Conference of Illinois-Wisconsin Tournament Championship.
Johnson scored all 16 of his points in the second half.
The win gave Elmhurst an automatic bid into the NCAA Division III Tournament — where on March 1 the No. 17 Bluejays lost 93-78 to No. 10 Calvin College. Among the Knights’ top scorers were senior forwards Marcus Bult (Wheaton Academy) and Uchenna Egekeze (Huntley) with 18 and 14 points, respectively.
Rebecca Markham (Fremd) won two events to help Hope College repeat as Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association women’s indoor track champion. The freshman won both the 3000-meter run and the 5000, and added a fourth-place finish in the 800.
Adding to Hope’s 32-point victory margin over Trine, senior Erin Moran (Hersey) ran a leg of a conference-record 1600 relay. Sophomore Molly Durow (Glenbrook South) helped the Flying Dutch win the distance medley. Junior Alana Policastro (Geneva) and senior Libby Strotman (Maine South) each scored in shot put.
Illinois College junior forward Josh Harris (Timothy Christian) averages 13.2 points, 3.2 rebounds and leads the Blueboys in assists and steals.
His team trailing with 2 seconds left in a March 1 NCAA Division III first-round playoff game against Dubuque, Harris took a teammate’s inbound pass outside of the 3-point arc. Quickly double-teamed, Harris dribbled once, turned and from about 28 feet swished a fadeaway 3-point shot for a 59-57 victory, Illinois College’s first NCAA Tournament win.
In her first college at-bat, Feb. 9 against Furman, DePaul freshman infielder Brooke Cwick (St. Viator) hit a run-scoring double. Two days later against Northern Kentucky, she hit her first college home run, a 2-run shot to left field.
South Dakota sophomore golfer Catie Nekola (St. Charles North) tied the Coyotes scoring record when she fired a 5-under par 67 in the third and final round of the Rio Verde Invitational on Feb. 25 in Arizona.
Nekola scored 5 birdies without once making bogey. Her 67 tied for the top score at Rio Verde, and she moved up 27 places in the standings to tie for 12th place.
As a freshman, Nekola shot rounds of 68 and 69. The 67 gives her at least a share of the first-, second- and third-best rounds in South Dakota women’s history.
At Boston University’s indoor David Hemery Valentine Invitational on Feb. 10, Kentucky senior Jake Allen (Naperville North) finished the 3000-meter run in 7 minutes, 58.05 seconds. That time ranks second on Kentucky’s all-time list.