From start to end, it was memorable prep sports year

This is the usual space dedicated to my year-ending column where I pause, take a breath and applaud the multiple feats of Panhandle athletes and teams.

I must begin this reflective glance by highlighting the just-completed spring season.

Call me a glutton for punishment, but I enjoy state track meets as much as I do any sport I write about. The quick answer why is that track is chock-full of a seemingly endless stream of refreshing stories.

Take the Coeur d’Alene Charter’s accomplishments, for example. It was expected that the Charter girls would capture a 1A state championship, and they left the field in their sprinting wake. But the state title garnered by the Charter boys was unexpected.

It was a nice farewell present for Coeur d’Alene Charter since it moves from the small 1A pond into a bigger body of water, 2A, next year.

If Lake City track coach Kelly Reed told you he thought his boys team could challenge for a state title, he would be flat-out lying.

Yet there were the Timberwolves last Friday, clinging to a two-point lead going into the final 5A state event, the 1,600-meter relay.

Sure, senior John Coyle didn’t have the meet he envisioned. He would be an easy target to pin as a goat. But he was a man and took responsibility, something that must be commended.

There were other ways LC could have won. Consider LC had the best 400-meter relay in the region, one that would have scored significant points at state, but it was disqualified at regionals.

So I suspect LC has much to celebrate, and second place is bigger than a consolation prize. It’s the first state trophy for a boys track team in school history.

Timberlake’s boys didn’t pull off the third title they sought, but they snagged a solid second and a state trophy for a fifth consecutive year.

It won’t be the last. Coach Brian Kluss has something special going up at Spirit Lake.

In baseball, Lake City didn’t pull off a repeat, but the Timberwolves gave themselves the opportunity. Even though coach Cory Bridges is stepping down, don’t expect LC to fall off the state baseball map. Bridges plans to go chew on a few sunflower seeds – wink – and watch his son, Trent, play at Lewis-Clark State College.

The LC program should continue to move forward. It shouldn’t retreat to the early rough years when Bridges had junior varsity-level talent on a varsity team.

Fall

Four football teams – Lake City, Lakeland, Timberlake and Kootenai – advanced to the semifinals.

The most impressive accomplishment, though, belonged to Coeur d’Alene freshman Kinsey Gomez, who captured the State 5A cross country title.

In volleyball, Sandpoint and St. Maries captured runner-up state trophies.

In soccer, Bonners Ferry’s boys captured the 3A state title and Coeur d’Alene’s boys took second in 5A.

Winter

What a wonderful season at Coeur d’Alene High. The Vikings girls finally broke through and captured the state title that had eluded them the past two years. The Vikings boys – the shortest team in the state – played with tenacity that was second to none and took second.

•A pair of spring coaches were recently given honors. LC’s Bridges and Post Falls track coach Wade Quesnell have been given the Distinguished Coach of the Year Award for their respective sports by the Idaho State Coaches Association.

These honors are well deserved and need to be highlighted.

Bridges built the LC program from the ground up and Quesnell has been a tireless advocate of his sport and a longtime assistant football and basketball coach. They don’t get any better than Bridges and Quesnell.

•In a newsworthy development last fall, Lakeland announced it was leaving the Inland Empire League in all sports beginning this fall.

All I can say is good luck with that.

•On a personal note, there have been some significant changes around here since early December. This is the first time that I’ve said anything in print about the changes. If you follow my blog, I have been a little more specific.

You’d have to have your head in the sand to not know we no longer feature an Idaho-only prep page each week. However, I believe it will continue to be our commitment at the end of each sports season to publish an Idaho-only page that features our various All-North Idaho teams and the appropriate season-ending column.

Those are franchises we established years ago. They are franchises that I will fight to keep even as journalism continues to change.

I would never have imagined that I’d be having to explain some of this. But there could be a day when newspapers go the way of the dinosaur, unfortunately.

I will begin my 25th year here in late August. Just to think I began on Aug. 27, 1984 as a dark-green-behind-the-ears rookie.

It’s been a busy life since then. I’m proud to say I’m still with my first wife – sorry, honey, just an attempt at humor there – and I’ll have two children – make that young adults – in college with my final child starting his sophomore year in high school.

I’ll begin my first fall of covering University of Idaho football and spending the other half of my time trying to keep a pulse on the preps. How exactly this will play out remains to be seen.

Come back in the fall and we’ll work through this together. A tip of the cap one final time to all the athletes and teams that made this year special.