Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Arizona's top newcomers include sprinters, hoopers and a key transfer

Each August I select the 10 leading newcomers/recruits in the UA athletic department and sometimes it gets predictable: Deandre Ayton, Lauri Markkanen, Aaron Gordon and on and on.

But there’s a new-look in the UA’s Class of 2018 and it begins with the most highly-touted sprinter since Olympic medalist Michael Bates entered Arizona in the fall of 1989.

Last week, UA track coach Fred Harvey completed the enrollment process for Texas state sprint champion Keishawn Everly of Fort Worth’s Trimble Tech High School.

Everly won the Texas 5A 100- and 200-meter championships last spring with Bates-like times. He has career bests of 10.14 in the 100 and 20.71 in the 200. Bates remains the fastest sprinter in UA history with a 10.17 clocking in 1991. Bates ran 20.53 in the 200 at Arizona, the event in which he won a bronze medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

Everly ran a wind-aided 10.14 this year. Everly’s 20.71 in the 200 would be No. 9 in UA history.

On with the Class of 2018 list:

1. Everly. If you project normal progress, he could someday challenge the long-standing 1976 school record of 20.27, set by Wardell Gilbreath.

2. Marissa Schuld, softball. The national high school player of the year by flosoftball.com, Schuld, of Phoenix Pinnacle, is, much like Jennie Finch a generation ago, a combo hitter-pitcher.

3. Ya-Chun Chang, women’s golf. The Taiwanese freshman, who spent last year at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, finished ninth in the U.S. Women’s Amateur this month and will contend for playing time immediately on the UA’s defending NCAA championship team that returns all five starters.

4. Cate Reese, women’s basketball. On paper, the 6-foot-3-inch Reese is the most highly-coveted women’s basketball recruit at Arizona since Shawntinice Polk in 2001. Reese, of Cypress, Texas, was ranked as high as the No. 4 post player in the nation.

5. James Smith Jr., hurdles. Smith’s dad is the head coach at Mesa Westwood High School, and his son could’ve gone to any place with track chops: Oregon, LSU, UCLA, you name it. But he chose Arizona in part because of Harvey’s history of coaching Olympic hurdlers Georganne Moline and Sage Watson. Smith is the national Junior Olympic champion in the 400 hurdles and his time of 51.45 was third among all high school hurdlers this year.

6. Bryce Collins, baseball. Could this be the franchise pitcher UA coach Jay Johnson has pursued since he was hired? It looks that way. Collins had an 0.98 ERA last season at SoCal’s Hart High School, striking out 86 in 57 innings.

7. Hallie Pearson, soccer. In her recent UA debut, a 5-0 win over UTEP, Pearson, a defender, played 82 minutes, the most of any Wildcat on a veteran team returning from the NCAA round of 32. She is from Carmel, Indiana, where last year she was ranked as high as the No. 56 prospect in the country.

8. Brandon Williams, men’s basketball. The point guard from Crespi High in SoCal, Williams was the No. 16 overall recruit in ESPN’s yearly Top 100.

9. Santeri Lehesmaa, men’s golf. As coach Jim Anderson continues his rebuild of the Wildcats, he scored his first international recruiting coup by getting Lehesmaa, of Finland, who last month finished 12th in the International Amateur Championships in Germany.

10. Emi Pua’a, volleyball. Possibly the top transfer in the UA’s Class of 2018, Pua’a led Iowa Western to a No. 7 finish in the NJCAA finals. Pua’a is a libero/defensive specialist who helped Honolulu’s Punahou High School to the 2014 state title.

Ben Kern, the 2001 state championship golfer from Palo Verde High School, earned $33,281 for tying for 42nd place at last week’s PGA Championship. Combined with his $42,000 for winning the Texas State Open two weeks ago, the Tucson native might’ve given consideration to leaving his job as a club pro near Austin, Texas, and giving the PGA Tour another try.

But he told reporters in St. Louis that he will remain at Georgetown Country Club and resist the temptation of going back on tour, as he did after graduating from Kansas State in 2006.

“I’ve got a 3½-year-old and a great family and I love being around them and want to be home as much as possible,” said Kern, 35, in an interview on CBS. “I love my job, teaching golf, running a golf operation, and playing in (club-pro type) tournaments.”

Kern worked his way up the club-pro ladder at several Tucson courses, including now-closed Blanchard Golf Course at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

Of the 20 PGA club pros who qualified, Kern was the only golfer to make last week’s cut. It was one of the top performances in the PGA by a Tucsonan in history, although Tucson High grad Phil Ferranti had a similar run in the 1977 PGA Championship at Pebble Beach.

Ferranti, who operates El Cisne restaurant in the Tucson foothills, shot 75-73-79-81 that year to finish tied for 66th. Like Kern, he was the only PGA club pro to make the cut that year. Two years earlier, 1975, Ferranti qualified for the PGA Championship at Firestone Country Club but missed the cut.

One of the leading athletes in Tucson prep history, Rudy Quihuis, died of cancer earlier this month. He was 68. Quihuis was so good in the 1967 football season that he intercepted 13 passes in 13 games for Pueblo High School, which reached the state championship game against undefeated St. Mary’s. Quihuis broke his leg in the first half of that game, a 34-22 loss. He was also one of the top baseball players in Tucson prep history. A memorial was held in his honor Saturday in Tucson.

Albert Subirats won three individual NCAA championships and helped Arizona win five NCAA relay championships between 2004-08, a time in which he became perhaps the second greatest UA swimmer in history, behind Ryk Neethling. The four-time Olympian from Venezuela is back in college swimming; he accepted an offer to be an assistant coach at Virginia Tech last week, part of the staff of former Arizona assistant coach Sergio Lopez Miro. Subirats and Lopez aren’t the only ex-Wildcats at Virginia Tech. Arizona NCAA champion in the breast stroke and 2016 Olympian Kevin Cordes has been training with Lopez for two years.

Nadi Carey is an achiever. In her high school basketball days at Canyon del Oro and Flowing Wells, she helped both teams win state championships. Then she was a key part of Pima College coach Todd Holthaus’ No. 2 finish in the NJCAA finals. Since then, Carey has joined the Golder Ranch Fire Department, and last week was hired to be a Division I basketball referee. She is scheduled to work mainly Big Sky Conference women’s games in her first season. Carey worked closely with ex-Arizona basketball/softball player Felicity Willis, who has been a Division I basketball official for five years.

About 10 weeks after it was closed by a Canadian bank that bought it in foreclosure in 2015, Oro Valley’s Golf Club at Vistoso appears to have found a savior. The Parks Legacy Project — a Phoenix-based golf redevelopment firm that refurbished Arizona courses such as the Wigwam and the Arizona Biltmore — has agreed to take control of the property. One employee had been retained to water Vistoso’s greens. This was a complicated issue; the many neighborhood associations at Vistoso joined forces and hired an attorney to work with Romspen, the Canadian financial firm that thought climbing water prices and a decline in play doomed Vistoso as a golf facility. This hasn’t been a promising year for golf in Tucson. Ten weeks ago, the fast-acting homeowners association at Arizona National Golf Club reached a five-year agreement to take control of that course from Romspen, which had threatened to close it. The golf industry in Tucson is so fragile that you never know what’s next. Davis-Monthan Air Force Base closed its course in May, and Kino Springs Golf Club near Nogales has also been closed.

Youth soccer is so ridiculously good in Tucson that when I wrote a list of the leading athletes in Tucson’s Class of 2019 last week, I left out two deserving athletes. CDO senior Hope Hisey, a goalie who does not play high school soccer but competes in the FC Tucson Youth academy, is so good that she accepted a scholarship to Arizona two years ago. And Rincon/University senior Zak Mohamed is part of Roxanne Taylor’s powerhouse that went 13-4-2 last year and could be better this season. Mohammed scored 22 goals last year, tops in Class 6A.

Shortstop Kevin Newman was named a first-team All-Pac-12 shortstop in 2015, then was the first-round draft pick of the Pittsburgh Pirates. He reached the big leagues last week after playing in 394 minor-league games. To celebrate the occasion, Newman’s wife, Shayne, took a red-eye flight from San Diego to join her husband. Newman’s parents, John and Tammy, and sister, Fallon, also flew to be part of Newman’s big-league debut in Thursday’s game against the Chicago Cubs. Newman became the 22nd former Andy Lopez player from Arizona to play in the big leagues. That’s remarkable considering Lopez coached the Wildcats from 2002-2015. The list: Scott Kingery, Brandon Dixon, Trevor Crowe, Nick Hundley, Jordan Brown, Steve Selsky, Rob Refsnyder, Joey Rickard, Johnny Field, Preston Guilmet, John Meloan, Daniel Schlereth, Mark Melancon, Jett Bandy, Brian Anderson, Brad Glenn, Jason Donald, Daniel Butler, Alex Mejia, Brad Mills, Ryan Perry and Newman.

I had the pleasure of watching Chuck Henson perform at La Fiesta de los Vaqueros and, later, meeting him near the bullrider’s chute at the Tucson Rodeo Grounds. It took all of two minutes for Henson’s engaging personality to make you think you had known him for years.

If the overused term “legend” is properly applied, it should be applied to Henson, who died in Tucson last week at 87.

Henson moved to Tucson in 1950 with one of America’s leading rodeo families and he took it up a notch from there. Henson has been inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame and the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame. The son of “Heavy” Henson, a Montana rancher and bullfighter, left an indelible mark in Tucson sports.

His mom, dad, aunt and uncle were all world champion rodeo performers. Chuck chose another line of work: a rodeo clown.

Gary Williams, longtime general manager of the Tucson Rodeo, once said Henson “is genuinely the funniest human being I have ever been around.”

During his four decades as a rodeo clown, Henson broke his jaw, hand, arm, ankle, both legs and many ribs. He had his teeth knocked out. He had surgery on both knees. But he kept coming back for more, keeping a smile on the faces of thousands of rodeo fans across America.

When John Wayne was in his prime, filming movies at Old Tucson, you didn’t have to look far to see Henson on the set, a valuable extra in movies for everyone from “The Duke” to Steve McQueen.

What I remember most about my valued conversations with Henson is that he said the toughest ride he ever had wasn’t in a rodeo at all.

While stationed in Alaska during his years in the Army in the 1950s — before enrolling at the UA — Henson said he became the “Champion Moose Rider of Alaska.”

His was a life well-lived.