Greg Lee

Coeur d'Alene High softball standout Kylie Chandler brings a presence to the field. It's more like a swagger. She wants people to notice – whether she's in center field or at bat.

Brian Kluss believes his Timberlake High boys track team couldn't have performed much better Saturday. Perhaps the only way the Tigers can top what they did to the 3A District I field is to repeat as state champions.

The Post Falls High softball team moved within a win of being a playing state host instead of a working state host. Third-seeded Post Falls knocked off No. 2 Lake City for a second time in three days Thursday as the Trojans pulled out a 3-1 win in a 5A Region I loser-out game at LC.

Through the early part of the 5A Region I golf tournament Wednesday, Coeur d'Alene High boys coach Bryan Duncan could tell the state-qualifying round was developing into one of survival, not a record-breaking round. Duncan's five golfers had knocked six shots out of bounds in the first six holes at the Prairie Falls Golf Club's forgiving front nine. Things wouldn't get much better when the Vikings reached the tightly designed back nine.

Something striking occurred moments after the Coeur d'Alene High softball team captured its sixth straight 5A Region I championship Tuesday afternoon. To a player, the Vikings walked through the postgame line after downing Post Falls 5-1 and retreated to the dugout as if it were just another win.

The Lake City High baseball team hasn't won nine straight games by accident. Perhaps the sixth inning Monday was a microcosm of why the Timberwolves finished the regular season on a hot streak and picked right back up in their 5A Region I opener.

Usually, wind chill isn't something to be alarmed about unless one is skiing or snowmobiling. A strong wind out of the west, which was especially challenging to sprinters, had track and field athletes and spectators scrambling for extra layers of clothing Thursday afternoon at the eighth annual District I Meet of Champions.

Brenna Lawson was well over the bar, positioned 11 feet and 4 inches above the ground, when she nudged it with her left hip on her final vault. The bar fell a second after the Lake City High senior hit the padded pole vault pit below. Lawson bounced back up, frustrated that her attempt to break her school record was foiled again last Friday at the Inland Empire League track meet.

Don't tell Lake City track coach Kelly Reed his teams' victories in the Inland Empire League championships Friday afternoon may have been a bit hollow. It's not his fault that his team's chief competition, Lewiston, essentially bypassed the conference finals for a second consecutive year.

Brad Reynolds has always been a student first and an athlete second. It's the various other activities in the Post Falls High senior's life – attaining Eagle rank in Boy Scouts, the highest possible ranking, and being one of his school's top actors in drama, for example – that more truly define who he is than sports. And that's fine with him.

Years ago under the late Dwight Church, Lewiston High's baseball teams and winning were synonymous. Under 14th-year coach Tom Grunenfelder, Lewiston's baseball teams and winning continue to be synonymous.

Ask Tyler Lichty what he wants to do long after he graduates and the Sandpoint High senior gives a quick, sincere answer. "I want to play baseball the rest of my life," the standout right-handed pitcher said.

One team talked about needing a wakeup call. The other hopes it got an alarm rouser Thursday. The Lake City High softball team rebounded from a previous loss to Coeur d'Alene as the visiting Timberwolves handed the Vikings their first defeat, 5-3, in an Inland Empire League game.