The Front Row with MARK NELKE Feb. 10, 2011

In 2008, Lake City scored a last-minute victory over Del Oro of Loomis, Calif., in a thrilling high school football game, part of a four-team event dubbed the Rocky Mountain Rumble.

Only problem was, the game took place several hundred miles away, in Pocatello, so few North Idaho fans were there to witness it live.

The man who put that event together, Matt Williams, has put together a similar event this fall, much closer to Coeur d’Alene.

The four-game event has a working title of the Idaho Football Classic, is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 17 at the Kibbie Dome in Moscow, and involves Lake City and Coeur d’Alene. Three of the eight teams are from California.

The first game at 11 a.m. is an eight-man game between Idaho schools Salmon River and Tri-Valley. Highland of Pocatello faces Vanden of Fairfield, Calif., at 2 p.m.

Lake City will face Rio Linda from the Sacramento area at 5 p.m., and Coeur d’Alene will take on Whitney of Rocklin, Calif., in the nightcap at 8.

Williams ran the Rocky Mountain Rumble in its first year, before turning over the event to the folks at Highland. Lake City played in the first two Rumbles. Williams said the Rumble will return for a fourth year this year, with Highland also slated to play in that event.

Whitney played in the first rumble, routing Idaho Falls. Whitney also played in a 12-team showcase for California schools that Williams put on in the Sacramento area last year, and plans to do again this year.

Ever since playing in Pocatello, Whitney coach Mike Gimenez has told Williams he’d like to play in a similar event in Oregon or Idaho if he could arrange one. Williams, who lives in Eagle and runs a service to help high school athletes get college scholarships (www.wannaplaycollegesports.com) as well as puts on showcase events, got on the phone.

“I called around,” he said. “The Treasure Valley didn’t want to do it. I called (Lake City coach) Van (Troxel) and (Coeur d’Alene coach) Shawn Amos, and they jumped right on board.”

In a realistic sense, the event also helps Lake City and Coeur d’Alene fill their football schedules -- something that is becoming more difficult every season.

With Caldwell High dropping to 4A this fall, the 10 remaining teams in the 5A Southern Idaho Conference opted to play a nine-game league schedule, leaving no room for nonleague games.

That left northern teams with a couple of holes in their schedules. If this event hadn’t come along, Coeur d’Alene and Lake City might have had to play each other twice this fall — which hardly anybody would have wanted, as the teams often face each other in the state playoffs as well.

Coeur d’Alene High running back/linebacker Zach Keiser had offers to play at defending NAIA national champion Carroll College in Helena, Mont., as well as fellow NAIA school Montana-Western in Dillon. Whitworth University over in Spokane thought he might be able to start for them at running back as a freshman.

But Keiser, who helped Coeur d’Alene win its first state championship in 25 years last fall, has accepted Boise State’s offer to join the Broncos as a preferred walk-on.

“He is going there to play wherever they want him,” Coeur d’Alene coach Shawn Amos. “He has a desire to prove he can play at that level.”

Despite missing two games with a foot injury, the 5-foot-10, 193-pound Keiser rushed for 1,313 yards and 21 touchdowns last fall.

Amos said defensive back/wide receiver Jake Matheson, who had 12 interceptions and attracted interest from Ivy League schools (he even made a visit to Brown), has been accepted into the honors program at Boise State and plans to concentrate on academics there.

After beating fourth-ranked Coeur d’Alene last week for the first time in four years, the fifth-ranked Lake City High girls basketball team will have to beat the Vikings again to earn a trip to state.

The city rivals square off Friday at 7 p.m. at Coeur d’Alene High to decide 5A Region 1’s second berth to state, scheduled for Feb. 17-19 at the Idaho Center in Nampa.

Lake City beat Coeur d’Alene 41-35 last Friday in Lewiston in the first round of the regional tournament. It ended a 13-game losing streak vs. the Vikings, and marked the first time any of the current Timberwolves (including coach Royce Johnston, in his third season) had beaten Coeur d’Alene.

“I’m fully confident we can get the job done,” Johnston said Tuesday night, after Lake City’s last-second 52-50 loss at Lewiston in the regional title game. “We did not play very well the other night overall (vs. Coeur d’Alene), and we got the win. We are capable of playing better than we did last Friday, so we’ll go lay it on the line again. I know we’ll be ready to play.”

Johnston said there was no mounting pressure over the years to beat Coeur d’Alene.

“For me, people asked if it felt good to get the monkey off your back,” he said. “I don’t like to lose to anybody, and the pressure was never mounting for me to beat them. It was a big district game, and we felt like we had a chance to win the game. I was happy we beat them, but I was more happy for our girls ... in their four years, they had never beaten them.”

Mark Nelke is sports editor of the Press. He can be reached by phone at (208) 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via e-mail at [email protected].