Change is constant

Lind-Ritzville is back home and Liberty has returned to its roots. The Northeast A League once again has just four teams, but a new member now that Newport has left the Great Northern League down one team.

Flux is constant among the region’s smaller high school leagues.

The Great Northern League, Northeast A League and various Class B leagues have all undergone change.

Lind-Ritzville and Liberty have left the NEA and returned to the Northeast B-11. The Southwest B-11 has increased to six teams with Dayton’s move down in classification.

Both the Northeast and Southeast B-8 leagues have officially increased in size, with St. John-Endicott and Colton-Pullman Christian in the Southeast and Cusick in the Northeast now eligible to participate in post-season.

There has also been coaching change within the various leagues. One of those is a familiar face at a new location.

Dayton’s new football coach is Dan Graham, who spent 28 years at Reardan, the last 11 as head coach, compiling a 102-21 record and winning the last two State B-11 titles.

He takes on a new challenge in a rival league that features DeSales, which finished second to Graham’s Indians at state last year.

His replacement at Reardan is Eric Nikkola, longtime Indians assistant and former head wrestling coach.

Coaches new to the Great Northern League are former Mead three-sport standout and University of Idaho kicker Keith Stamps at Deer Park and Mike Henry at Medical Lake.

In the Northeast A League Don Fox, Kettle Falls athletic director returns to football after a 13-year hiatus.

And Rick Johnson is back at Liberty, where he assisted, after a two-year stint as head coach in Morton.

Class 2A

Mike Henry and Keith Stamps are taking on a challenge.

In his first head coaching job, Henry inherits a league championship team from retired John Giannandrea that went unbeaten before disaster struck in the form of first-round playoff turnovers.

Henry’s team is considered one of the favorites in a league that includes 2003 2A state runner-up Pullman.

“Pullman has enough athletes to be a good team for the next three years,” said Riverside coach Allen Martin.

Said Henry, “I’m not going guarantee a 10-0 season, but I think we’ll do pretty well. I took over a group of hard-working enthusiastic kids. They’re adapting to all the changes and have learned my system faster than I’d hoped.”

Henry comes from a football family. His father, Lon, was long time coach at White Swan. He and his two younger brothers played at Central Washington University, Mike on a national championship team.

He assisted at Central, White Swan, Eisenhower and Davis before getting, at age 30, his first head coaching job.

Stamps, 23, played football, baseball and wrestled for the Panthers, graduating in 1998. He went to Idaho to play football, “but it didn’t take long to realize that, as a 5-10 guy with 4.8 speed, that wouldn’t happen.”

But he did get on the field as a kicker and said he feels lucky to have had the opportunity and experience.

After assisting at Gonzaga Prep last year, he applied and was hired at Deer Park after Doug McGill took the Eastmont coaching job in Wenatchee. The Stags are coming off a 1-8 season.

“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” said Stamps. “But it’s been a lot of fun, so far.”

Most coaches believe the Great Northern League will be improved as a whole over last year.

“I don’t see a bad football team,” said Stamps. “They’re all very, very well coached. I’m going to learn how to coach this game in a hurry.”

Class 1A

Don Fox is a Kettle Falls institution. The Bulldogs athletic director hired himself to become football coach when Tracy Flugel resigned.

“We didn’t have any openings that fit at the time,” Fox said.

He coached softball to a state title last spring and is the only one, he believes, to have had state slow-pitch and fast-pitch team champions.

Now, the Kettle Falls native is back heading football for the first time since 1991, giving up junior high basketball.

“I had enough on my plate,” Fox said.

He’ll coach in a small, but tough league that includes defending champion Freeman, perennial power Colfax and Newport, 3-6 last year in 2A.

Fox said he liked the league better last year when it had six teams.

“Now for football we play each other twice again and some thought that’s not a good deal,” he said. “By the same token it hasn’t seemed to hurt our league. Even small, we think it will be a banner year.”

Class B

The arrival of Lind-Ritzville, after a year away, and Liberty, following a five-year absence, increases the Northeast B-11 League to 10 schools.

It would seem logically to be a better deal for the two new teams, although Lind-Ritzville made the State A playoffs in football last year, girls volleyball and basketball finished first and second in state and baseball reached the state quarterfinals during its one Northeast A League season.

“We’ve tried to treat it as no big deal,” said Broncos football coach Mike Lynch, “just like we didn’t want it to be a big deal when we were gone. We’re back, we’ve been playing them for 30 years and it will be fine.”

If nothing else it makes a tough league tougher.

New Reardan football coach Nikkola said, “in one sense this makes it really tough because every game is a league game. You don’t want to stub your toe at all. At the same time, bringing back perennial playoff teams makes it a good solid league.”

Nikkola, a Central Valley graduate, began his coaching career at Reardan 14 years ago with Gene Smith while in college and has been on staff for the past 11 under Graham.

“I wasn’t in any rush (to be head coach),” he said. “If Dan were here another 10 or 15 years I’d have stayed right with him. This just worked out.”

He said in talking with Graham, he understands Dayton is young and expects to struggle in a league where state runner-up DeSales is a heavy favorite.

Rick Johnson returned to Liberty after two years as head coach at Morton. He replaces Rod Fletcher who won five league titles, made eight state appearances, won two state titles and finished second once while in the Bi-County.

Johnson had been a co-coach at Inchelium and spent five years as Lancers assistant.

“I liked it at Morton fine, but always wanted to come back,” he said. “You can never get that Lancer out of your blood, I guess.”

He said he’s looking forward to being Liberty’s head coach and that returning to the Northeast B-11 league is good.

“I don’t think it will be a whole lot of difference, to tell the truth,” he said. “The better teams are as good as the A schools, anyway.”