Look out for the Tigers

Timberlake High football coach Roy Albertson doesn’t know what all the fuss is about.

He could return all of his starters from a state championship team and he wouldn’t think his team should be picked to win the Intermountain League title.

So don’t tell him his Tigers are tabbed to win the IML – even though his team returns the most starters and lettermen of all the league teams.

Albertson wasn’t thrilled to hear his team would be picked the favorite.

“I don’t like to be the favorite,” Albertson said. “We have good kids, but there are three teams that will make the state playoffs and none of those teams is going to hand it to us. We’ve got to prove we can play defense. We couldn’t do it last year. We’ve got to play better defense if we’re going to be a championship contender.”

Timberlake returns 32 lettermen – that may be an IML record – and 12 starters, most of whom are two-way starters. So hold off on sending those sympathy cards to Albertson.

“You’ve got to look at Timberlake as the favorite,” said Bonners Ferry coach Caleb Arceneaux, whose team steamrolled through the IML last year.

How dominating was Bonners Ferry? The Badgers outscored the league 152-14, and the 14 points were scored by Timberlake. As Arceneaux puts it, his team ought to have shut out the league.

“The scores came on two missed tackles,” Arceneaux said.

Arceneaux’s Badgers will be in the mix, too, despite an alarming 34-0 spanking handed to them by Lakeland last week.

“The league is going to be tighter – tighter than it was last year,” Arceneaux said. “The league was down last year. The league championship is ours until somebody takes it.”

The IML will be part of a big change in the 3A state playoff format this year. Three of the league’s five teams advance to the playoffs, with the league winner playing host to the No. 3 seed and the league runner-up traveling to the Snake River Valley League champ (District III). The regular season will end one week earlier than usual under the format, meaning the IML’s two odd teams out will play one final game against each other.

At Timberlake, the best way to describe how much experience the Tigers return is to point out they graduated just one starter.

“Offensively, we only have to add one new player into the mix,” Albertson said. “We’re not huge by any means, but we’ve got very fast kids for our level.”

In fact, several of the Tigers had significant contributions on Timberlake’s state title in track last spring.

“A lot of those kids will be on both sides of the ball, so we like our speed,” Albertson said.

Albertson said many things must mesh for Timberlake to make a deep run into the state playoffs.

“Injuries and bad luck at this level can kill you,” Albertson said. “Teams at our level don’t have backups that can replace starters. The state playoffs are a long ways down the road.”

Bonners Ferry said farewell to the league’s most versatile and valuable player a year ago, Matt Rice. So the Badgers have some big shoes to fill.

“When you lose Matt Rice, you lose more than one player,” Arceneaux said.

The rest of the league will be much improved. It could be a tug of war for the third playoff spot between Priest River and Kellogg. The Lumberjacks of St. Maries are the odd team out, considering they have too much ground to make up to be competitive with the others.

Former East Valley coach Ray Stookey takes over at Priest River for Gary Stewart, who resigned to take the girls basketball head coaching position vacated by Jamie Pancho when he resigned to become Newport’s boys basketball head coach.

St. Maries graduate Jason Hall has the unenviable task of trying to rebuild the Lumberjacks’ floundering program. The last time St. Maries won an IML championship was 1995 when Hall was the league’s standout running back.