Unless you do what I did last week by brainstorming a long list, it’s easy to overlook some of the gifted student-athletes within the Peninsula School District.

My task was to pick the 10 best individual athletic performances of the 2011 calendar year. Let me tell you, even in a two-school coverage area, that was next to impossible without feeling like someone was being discredited. My final rough draft included 30 athletes.

So, my apologies to the likes of Ryan Anderson, Libby Fogel, Casey Larson and Celia Vaughn. Your performances were deserving, but when I was pressed, I bumped you off the totem pole.

Five of my 10 choices play more than one sport, not including the two boys who run cross country in the fall and track in the spring. In my book, being diverse carries a little extra weight.

In the interest of fairness, there are no inequalities in schools or genders. Five Gig Harbor High School athletes were chosen, five from Peninsula High. Five boys, five girls.

Let’s get to the list:

10. Anne Binschus, Peninsula: A couple months ago, Binschus told me she regretted not playing her junior year of volleyball, because she had so much fun with the sport.

Binschus returned to the court this fall for coach Ann Lovrovich and was a solid contributor on defense, but her true gift is fastpitch softball.

Binschus will play at Texas Tech next year, and she batted an incredible .540 with 19 runs scored and 20 RBIs for the Seahawks’ Class 3A state-tournament team.

9. Courtney Jost, Gig Harbor: My September practice stint with the Peninsula volleyball team made me increasingly appreciative of players like Jost, who look like they’re bouncing around the court on a pogo stick.

Jost was selected to the Class 4A Narrows League’s first team as an outside hitter, but she accomplished even more this year for the Tides’ track and field team.

As a sophomore, she won league titles in all three jumping events. She advanced to state in all three events, and she won medals in the long jump and triple jump.

8. Curtis King, Peninsula: When King crossed the finish line at the 2010 state cross-country championships, he was far from pleased with his eighth-place finish because he made a tactical error in the middle of the race.

Things changed in his final state appearance in November, when he finished fifth and set a personal record by 18 seconds.

King also was a standout on the track, where he finished sixth at state in the 3,200 meters and ninth in the 1,600.

7. Aspen Ison, Peninsula: An absolute workhorse for the Seahawks’ fastpitch team, Ison was named the 3A South Puget Sound League’s Pitcher of the Year as a sophomore.

Ison pitched in all 26 of her team’s games and compiled a 1.69 ERA. She struck out 152 batters in 120 innings and limited opposing hitters to a .229 batting average.

She didn’t do badly with the bat either: She hit .429 with 16 RBIs and 18 runs scored. Expect her to follow in Binschus’s footsteps and be the program’s next major-college recruit.

6. Danny Welstad, Peninsula: Fans might wonder why Welstad doesn’t check in higher on this list, since his 2,254 rushing yards were third in the state for all classifications this fall. Credit for that goes to the Seahawks’ offensive line, making Welstad’s star-studded football season more of a team effort.

National signing day is Feb. 1, 2012, and Welstad is reportedly getting attention from big-name programs like Boise State, Oregon State, Washington and Washington State.

5. Julia Ponce, Gig Harbor: Ponce grabbed my attention in March when I attended the first water polo match of my life, and she scored eight goals in the Tides’ win over Wilson.

As a freshman, Ponce quickly became one of the best players in the state, thanks to her extensive training with the Stanford (Calif.) Water Polo Club and her family lineage in the sport. Her older sister, Elise, is the goalkeeper at Loyola Marymount University.

Ponce figures to be the go-to girl once again in 2012 as the Tides shoot for a state-title three-peat.

4. Mike McCall, Gig Harbor: McCall will be hitting the field again soon as he starts his freshman season of baseball with the Oregon State Beavers. He’ll be playing alongside fellow GHHS graduates Spencer Manjarrez and Scott Schultz.

McCall’s final season of high-school ball was a stellar one, as he pitched the Tides to the state playoffs and was a first-team Narrows League selection.

In nearly 10 years of covering prep sports, I’ve seen very few guys match McCall in terms of arm strength and command of off-speed pitches.

3. Rachel Lewis, Peninsula: Golf often is overlooked when it comes to top-level athletes, but there’s no denying that the South Sound has produced a lot of them throughout the years, and Lewis will add to her credentials in 2012 as she heads to Washington State.

Lewis didn’t start to play competitively until her early teenage years, but she began to get the necessary tournament experience through the American Junior Golf Association and the Future Collegians World Tour.

Her work with coach Tony Robydek paid off in May, when she won the state tournament. She’ll be the odds-on favorite to do it again next spring.

2. Korey Durkee, Gig Harbor: It’s extremely rare for any football coach to admit his best player works exclusively on special teams, but I wasn’t surprised when Tides coach Darren McKay told me that about Durkee during the summer.

Durkee’s year included several highlights. He was named the state’s 4A goalkeeper of the year after he led the Tides to a state soccer berth, then earned first-team all-state status in football as a punter.

He also managed to squeeze in time to travel to some prestigious kicking competitions, and he gave an oral commitment to continue his football career close to home at Washington.

1. Wolfgang Beck, Gig Harbor: I was well aware of Beck’s exploits before I actually started to cover his races, although I didn’t meet him until last spring, when he made a surprisingly strong showing in the 1,600 meters at the Narrows track championships.

This fall, Beck began to live up to the enormous hype that accompanied his arrival at the high-school level. He was healthier as a sophomore cross-country runner, largely due to coach Mark Wieczorek’s expert training regimen, and his performances skyrocketed.

He blew through the field at the league meet, was second to standout Korey Krotzer of Auburn Riverside at the district meet, and he made a serious run at the state title before he settled for fifth.
Then he finished 31st at the Nike Cross Nationals, although he admitted feeling like a boy among men there.

Sports Editor Neil Pierson can be reached at 253-853-9246 or by email at neil.pierson@gateline.com. Follow him on Twitter, @gateway_neil.