Cda-Lc Matchup Aspires To Having No Rival

Van Troxel still has the game ball. It represents one of his most cherished memories of an intracity rivalry football game.

And it was a game his team shouldn’t have won.

The year was 1983 and the Lake City High coach was in the midst of a rebuilding program at Hellgate High in Missoula. Troxel’s team was 1-7 going into the final regular-season game against Missoula Sentinel, then 8-0 and ranked second in the state.

Sentinel had a standout linebacker named Russ Blank, who later followed Troxel to LC to be his defensive coordinator. But Hellgate pulled off a shocker, winning 14-13.

Troxel keeps the game ball - signed by all his players with the final score written in permanent ink - in his office at LC.

Well, he tries to keep it there. Blank, who gets tired of being reminded of the painful loss, kidnapped the ball just before the season started and buried it under T-shirts and shorts in his coaching locker.

A head coach, though, has keys to everything. Troxel took the ball out of hibernation the other day to show it to me.

It’s evidence that sometimes the underdogs win - especially in rivalries.

Intracity rivalries are something to be appreciated.

Until I moved to Idaho in 1984, I didn’t think there was a crosstown conflict equal to the one I grew up around in the Tri-Cities: Kamiakin vs. Kennewick.

Back when I was struggling in geometry and barely passing in biology, Kennewick had the upper hand. That was largely due to a man by the name of Ed Troxel, whose connections to Idaho in general and North Idaho in particular go beyond his son, Van.

Ed Troxel arrived at then-hapless Kennewick in the late 1970s and turned a program around that had gone winless the year before. There’s no mistaking that Troxel took Kennewick from the outhouse to the penthouse and, in so doing, dominated the crosstown rivalry.

And as rivalries go, that game every year transcended season accomplishments. They’re almost bigger than life.

Perhaps that will be said of Coeur d’Alene-Lake City some day.

At just 7 years old, though, it’s young by rivalry standards. But boy, does it have promise.

LC leads the series 5-4 (three times, the schools played twice in the same year). CdA won the first four games in lopsided fashion and LC did likewise the next four. The ninth meeting last year resembled competition as LC rallied for a 28-14 win.

The 10th game, Friday at Viking Field, should be the best faceoff yet.

“It’s not the established tradition of some of the others, but it’s headed in the direction you want a rivalry to head,” Van Troxel said. “The first three years, it belonged to (CdA). The next two years, it belonged to us and last year was a good game. It’s becoming competitive.”

While growth caused the need for a second school in CdA and birthed a rivalry, many of the intracity battles in these parts have succumbed to growth.

Over the years, no rivalry has been as bitter as Highland-Pocatello on the southeastern corner of the state.

Another similar rivalry that pre-dates Highland-Pocatello resided in Boise where the school named after the capital city had a measurable dislike for Borah.

Two decades before he arrived at Kennewick, Ed Troxel coached a powerful dynasty at Borah.

In the late 1980s, another intracity conflict developed between Meridian and Centennial.

All four of the rivalries mentioned previously are no longer the only shows in their towns.

A third high school opened in Kennewick a few years ago; Pocatello now is a three-school town with the addition of Century; Boise is home to four schools; and Meridian, now a three-school district, passed a bond levy last week to build a fourth.

No rivalry has to be distasteful to be appreciated. You just need two schools vying for the majority of one town’s attention.

It’s best served, once a fall, on a grassy field 100 yards long surrounded by a couple thousand vociferous fans.

I’m paid to be a neutral bystander. Still, I can’t wait until Friday.

See you there.