Three Mountaineers Named CCC Athlete of the Week
By Shannon Weidemann (McKone) on Thursday, January 27th, 2022 in More Top Stories Northeastern Oregon News
LA GRANDE – (Information from Eastern Oregon University) The Cascade Collegiate Conference has announced its WVT Laboratory Players of the Week and Eastern Oregon had a trio of student-athletes make the list.
Earning the weekly honors were a pair of track & field athletes in Tyler Jones and Maggie Ledbetter and basketball player Sailor Liefke. Jones and Ledbetter were tabbed the Indoor Male and Female Field Athletes of the Week, respectively, while Liefke was named the Women’s Basketball Player of the Week.Jones had a steller weekend in just his third ever collegiate meet. The freshman finished second in the high jump as he cleared a height of 6-7 ½. His height clearance came on his third and final leap to place in the top-two. Jones’ mark ranks him 13th in the NAIA and it is the sixth highest mark in program history for indoor season. It is also a B standard and provisional qualifying height for the NAIA Indoor National Championships.
Ledbetter automatically punched her ticket to Indoor Nationals on Saturday with an A qualifying mark in the shot put. She heaved the rock a distance of 44-1 ½ on her fifth throw of the day to secure a third place finish. Her throw ranks her seventh in the NAIA and she is just one of seven athletes to automatically qualify for Indoor Nationals in shot put.
Liefke was nearly unstoppable for the Mountaineers in their first home games of the 2022 New Year. En route to guiding the team to a 2-0 sweep, she scored 20 or more points in both games including a home career high of 32 points against rival Southern Oregon. She shot over 50% in both games and finished the weekend with 13 total rebounds. Liefke’s heroics showed late in both games as she scored the team’s final nine points in the OT win over Oregon Tech and the final eight points in the win over SOU.
