THE FRONT ROW with Mark Nelke June 9, 2011

A few memories of the recently completed high school/college sports season:

n On The Day The World Was Supposed to End, eerie-looking dark clouds hovered over Post Falls as I drove to Ramsey Park in Coeur d'Alene to watch the state 4A high school softball championship game.

Meanwhile, they were getting ready to play the state 5A championship game at Post Falls High.

If something strange is going to happen today, I thought, at least wait until after the state titles had been decided.

Standing there at Ramsey, you could see the storm clouds off to the west, and figured they were headed our way eventually.

Even during the game, a couple of raindrops fell.

But a strange thing happened.

The clouds stayed put, which was a good thing for Ramsey, which had hosted two previous state tournaments in the past decade which had been washed out before the championship game could be played, leaving tournament officials to declare a champion based on games that were completed.

Nobody wanted to go through that again, especially Emmett and Columbia, which were playing in the title game.

Meanwhile, the clock ticked toward 3 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, or 6 p.m. Eastern. The clown that predicted this worldwide rapture said it would happen at 6 p.m., but in which time zone? He didn't say. You figured if it was going to happen, it was going to happen simultaneously around the world, not at 6 p.m. in each time zone.

The world wasn't going to end on tape delay on the West Coast, like an NBC production of the Olympics.

As it turned out, the clouds opened up over Post Falls, drenching those at the state 5A title game, causing a rain delay in the second inning which eventually rendered the field unplayable.

A call was placed to Ramsey, to see if that field was playable. It was. But instead, it was decided to move from Post Falls to Lake City High to complete the 5A game.

There, Lake City went on to beat Timberline of Boise to capture its first state title in 10 years, completing an undefeated season without further weather incident.

At Ramsey, Emmett completed its victory over Columbia of Nampa for the 4A title, and both teams were well out of town and headed back to southern Idaho before the rains eventually game.

And - even better - the world didn't end that day either.

n Losses by Post Falls (5A) and St. Maries (3A) in the semifinals of the state boys basketball tournaments created a Saturday night in southern Idaho without a local team to cover.

Then again, the North Idaho College women's basketball team was playing for the Region 18 title that night, only a couple hours away in Twin Falls, so why not?

After watching Post Falls capture the consolation title and Coeur d'Alene win the third-place game on Saturday morning, both at Columbia High in Nampa, Press photographer Shawn Gust and I hopped on the freeway and - observing the speed limit, of course - hightailed it for the Magic Valley.

I remember listening to a UConn-Notre Dame men's basketball game on the car ride there. Notre Dame wound up winning that game on UConn's home floor, and the way the Huskies were struggling during that time, who would have thought that would turn out to be UConn's last loss of the season?

We still had some work to do, wrapping up our stories and photos from those games, when we arrived at Twin Falls, so we pulled into the local McDonald's for two important reasons - we were hungry, and it had free WiFi.

Alternately working the laptops and the French Fries, we looked up and noticed a group of rather tall people milling around the counter, waiting to order, and we wondered ...

... What the heck is Nick Fromm doing here?

Oh yeah. NIC's men were eliminated in the first round two days earlier, but were still in town to cheer on the Cardinal women's team. That explained all the familiar faces we watched filing in to grab a late-afternoon pregame meal.

You never know what you're going to run into at the College of Southern Idaho, as it is NIC's main rival.

Or so it seemed.

Though NIC was playing Salt Lake for the women's Region 18 title, many CSI fans showed up early - their men's team was playing Salt Lake for the Region 18 title in the second game - to root for NIC's women. They cheered hard for the Cards, as if they were their own team. And after they had knocked off Salt Lake for the regional title, the NIC players said they appreciated having the crowd on their side.

Then it was off to file the story, and head back to our tournament headquarters in Meridian - late at night, and through the rain, of course.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via e-mail at mnelke@cdapress.com.