Greg Lee: Story of year? It has to be LC football

I asked and you spoke.

What was the top high school sports story in these here parts in 2006?

That’s the question I posed last week on the blog during the tail end of my recent vacation. I asked bloggers to post their nominations.

It was a no-brainer, really. So without further ado, the top story in 2006 was Lake City cruising to a 12-0 record and the State 5A football championship.

I’ve thought about this quite a bit since hitting the send button on my computer minutes after Lake City throttled perennial power Highland 35-6 in the finale. It’s not often teams at any level march through a season undefeated. There are too many intangibles to overcome. The most recent team to do so in this region, in the big-school division, was Lewiston in 1996. The previous team to do it prior to Lewiston was Coeur d’Alene in 1982.

The fact that LC went undefeated in and of itself sets that team apart. It was a team that was talented on both sides of the ball.

But, without question, the most dominating facet of this team was defense. I wouldn’t say that the defense consisted of the best athletes. That would be disrespecting senior quarterback Garren Hammons, junior running back B.J. Palmer, and some of those linemen and receivers, too.

It started with a defensive line that was nails from end to end. In the middle of the defense was the best set of linebackers I’ve seen on one team at one time – seniors Brandon Hanna, Matt Widmyer and Chris Bobbitt.

You had a few thoughts about LC’s season, too. Here are a couple of them:

From Hubba1: “Slam dunk, Idaho’s 5A state football champs Lake City Timberwolves. Their margin of victory was 27 points. Ranked 13th nationally. Slam dunk.”

From Lead Creek: “Lake City High School’s 12-0 football season is the No. 1 high school sports story of the year. Yes, they were 12-0; yes, their margin of victory was incredible; yes, their near 1,000 yards rushing in the three playoff games was amazing. However, the biggest story was that they successfully carried the burden of expectation through the championship. … Such a burden of expectation, on athletes of any level, is the greatest obstacle to overcome and they did it in style.”

Well said. What will happen in 2007? It’s a question I’m going to pose to our bloggers.

My knee-jerk answer is we’ll have several state champions like we did in ‘06, like we seemingly do every year. But we won’t have a football team go 12-0.

That doesn’t happen every year. And that’s why ‘06 was so special, especially for LC football.