Lake City takes on Timberline in battle of wolves

Coeur d’Alene’s Lake City High School baseball team departed Wednesday morning on a journey that ends with a battle of wolves in the state playoffs.

The Timberwolves (16-8) beat Post Falls in the 5A Region I title game to earn a berth to the state tournament from an Inland Empire League that had several good teams.

But Lake City not only drew the Timberline Wolves (24-3), it drew a team that will be playing the last games under the only coach its ever head, Larry Price, CdA graduate. The game starts at noon on Thursday at Memorial Stadium in Boise.

Price has led the Wolves to 11 state championships, but he is retiring so that he can watch his sons play baseball, including senior Parker Price who has agreed to play for Gonzaga University.

“They are a very good, well-coached team,” Lake City coach Paul Manzardo said. “Larry Price is well respected in the state of Idaho. They are a solid program that is rich in baseball tradition. It will be a very good opponent we are playing.”

The Timberwolves’ success came mostly on the arms of seniors Dominic Conigliaro and Cody Garza to earn the trip to challenge the Wolves.

“We were pretty solid one-through-nine,” Manzardo said. “Overall, we did a really good job offensively. We had a good approach.”

If the Timberwolves win, they will play Friday at 3:30 p.m. against the winner of Mountain View (14-4) versus Highland (19-11).

If Lake City loses, the Timberwolves would play Friday at 9 a.m.

Also qualifying for the tournament is IEL regular-season champion Lewiston (22-5), which takes on Madison (17-13) Thursday at 3:30 p.m.

“That was the one thing about our league, we were all fairly evenly matched teams,” Manzardo said. “Lewiston is going down as a No. 2 seed. They are a very good team.”