Lake City favored again

The Lake City High football team is the clear-cut favorite to win the 5A Inland Empire League championship and advance to the state playoffs for a 10th straight season.

The Timberwolves more than backed up that prediction with their season-opening shutout of defending 5A state champion Meridian. In fact, the 23-0 win at Meridian may have launched LC from state-title contender to the arguably the team to beat overnight.

That doesn’t surprise IEL coaches one bit.

“Lake City is loaded,” Post Falls coach Jeff Hinz summarized succinctly. “They’re very talented.”

“Lake City, obviously, is going to be called the favorite,” CdA coach Shawn Amos said of the chase for the 5A IEL title.

LC coach Van Troxel doesn’t try to deflect the attention.

“This could be the best team in school history,” Troxel said. “But we won’t know that until the season is done. The tough thing about this group being labeled (a favorite to win the state title) is this is the toughest schedule we’ve played. There are no cupcakes on the schedule. And every team we play will bring their ‘A’ game because they’re playing us.”

The top two IEL 5A teams advance to the state playoffs, and the team mentioned most often as second-best among the rest is Coeur d’Alene.

Coeur d’Alene, in fact, more than has Troxel’s attention.

“Coeur d’Alene is as good as anybody in the state,” Troxel said. “They don’t have the big names we do, but they have no weaknesses. They’re as solid as any team they’ve had and that includes the year (2004) they played in the state title game.”

The CdA-LC game has been moved, meaning if the teams both advance to the state playoffs they won’t have to play back-to-back games like has happened the past two years. The league showdown is scheduled for Sept. 29 – at CdA – a month earlier than usual.

Both coaches aren’t tickled to have to play such an important game in the first month, but it’s better than the alternative. What it means is a much heavier emphasis on the early non-conference games.

What gives LC perhaps the biggest edge going into the season is it returns the most experienced quarterback in the league in senior Garren Hammons. He’s in the mold of all the recent LC QBs who can run and pass with equal efficiency.

“That’s one of the biggest differences between us and the league,” Troxel acknowledged. “Skillwise, Garren is already ahead of where he was a year ago. Our offense basically returns intact. That makes us the favorite in the league.”

Throw on top of that a defense that should be stifling and capable of scoring its share of points and LC will be a handful to deal with this year.

“The last 10 years we’ve had one of the best offenses consistently in North Idaho – or anywhere,” Troxel said. “Offensively we won’t be any better or any less. The exciting thing is our defense. Because of our defense we can be pretty good.”

With Post Falls’ move to 5A, that leaves just three teams in the 4A IEL – Sandpoint, Lakeland and Moscow – and just one state playoff berth. Sandpoint’s program, despite a head coaching change, is still light years ahead of the other two teams.

But Lakeland, which opened with an impressive 34-0 win over former Intermountain League rival Bonners Ferry, is making strides.

“The gap between our program (and Sandpoint) is closing,” Lakeland coach Tim Kiefer said.