THE FRONT ROW with Bruce Bourquin, Nov. 29, 2013

After a trying season as an assistant varsity football coach last year, Chris Dohrman almost walked away from coaching Lakeside High football and basketball teams to take a brief break.

FOR HIS sake and especially the Knights' student-athletes - the entire school had an enrollment of 92 students entering this school year - Dohrman decided to stick around.

His reward, after 12 years serving as an assistant to both the Lakeside football and girls basketball teams?

Only one week before the football team's first practice this past summer, he was hired to become the new head coach of the varsity football team. And in late October, Dohrman, a 1994 Lakeside High grad, was hired to be the head coach of the varsity boys basketball team.

Lakeside's core players include mostly players from the football team. There are eight returners and eight seniors.

"It's the challenge of working with different group of kids," Dohrman said of the boys basketball team. "I think the biggest challenge is the same kids moving from high school football are also the same kids in basketball. Some of my role players in football are the leaders in basketball, so those dynamics of that are the main challenges."

Dohrman talked about the dynamics of coaching boys basketball this season, which he is doing along with assistant coach Clinton Marsters, as compared to coaching girls hoops.

"What I liked about coaching high school girls is I went from boys (football) and I was able to switch to girls," Dohrman said. "You've got whole different personalities and it's the fact that it makes it a little difficult to work with the same group of kids going into a new sports season.

It's something I haven't been used to. I think the speed of the game with the boys is quite a bit faster. I think the girls are a little bit more coachable.

They're willing to take what you're trying to teach them a little better than boys do, especially in basketball. Boys seem to know too much and they're not as coachable ... my main goal is to help these boys improve as individuals and come in as better basketball players than they were at the beginning of the season."

The full-time accountant who lives in Plummer and works for the Coeur d'Alene Tribe was hired to coach the boys basketball team about one month before the Knights' season begins Dec. 3 at home against Troy. Last season, under former head coach Brad Calkins, Lakeside finished 6-2 in league (11-12 overall).

"That was fine, because I was prepared to coach the girls for junior varsity," Dohrman said. "I was prepared for that. I had three or four weeks to get ready."

THE TOUGH season Dohrman referred to that almost made him want to temporarily walk away from coaching happened during football season in 2012, when he said there were quite a few issues surrounding the Lakeside football team that finished 0-8 (0-4 in league). Dohrman worked with the quarterbacks and receivers and was the junior varsity team's head coach.

"Last year was one of the roughest years I've ever been involved in as a coach," Dohrman said. "We had a lot of attitude problems. There was some dissension, a lot of kids were quitting the team. It was almost so bad, where I was considering not coaching for a while. But this year was definitely a good year, I enjoyed it and it rejuvenated me."

Despite finishing with a 1-8 record this season (0-2 in the 1A Division I North Star League), Dohrman said he enjoyed the ride of being the man in charge.

"I was extremely pleased with the season," Dohrman said. "The kids came out, played hard and fought every week. Last season was difficult, because there wasn't one game where we didn't have someone play out of position. We really only had one true lineman. We had one kid, Matt Stensgar, who was out three games with a concussion. He was a linebacker, he was one of our best defensive players. Leroy Arroyo, one of our backup running backs, was out half the season with a knee injury. He's a big part of our future. They played their hearts out. It's not like at Coeur d'Alene or Lake City, where every year you have someone ready to play. Their attitudes were really good."

DOHRMAN REPLACED Jason Dalton, who resigned as the head coach a few months after he was hired to replace longtime Lakeside football coach Ron Miller, who retired.

"I think he did a good job," Miller said of Dohrman. "He dealt with injuries, the kids were well-prepared, I think the kids played hard. He works hard and that's what he expects out of his kids. He understands conditioning."

He certainly does. Dohrman finished the Ironman Coeur d'Alene triathlon last summer, finishing 898th overall out of 2,318 finishers with an overall time of 12 hours, 51 minutes, 35 seconds.

Dohrman said he was put in a tough situation after Dalton left.

"It was difficult," Dohrman said. "A week before practice, he (Dalton) said he wasn't coming over. My assistant coach, Tim Turner, and I were left to run the program. So that was more difficult. I wasn't as prepared as I wanted to be."

Dohrman was a 6-foot post player who played two seasons for the Knights' varsity boys basketball team and graduated from Lakeside in 1994. He attended North Idaho College for two years and in 2007, he graduated from Lewis-Clark State College, with a bachelor's of arts degree in business administration.

AS A first-year coach of two teams, Dohrman has learned how to handle the things that don't always happen on the court.

"I learned there's a lot more to it," Dohrman said. "A lot of it has nothing to do with basketball. Dealing with parent issues, parent meetings. I've been exposed to this for quite a while. There was really no difference between being an assistant and being a head coach. It wasn't a big shock or change. I imagine it'll be the same deal with basketball season. I could've been a varsity head coach at Lakeside a few years ago. I really enjoyed working with Ron (Miller). That was my main reason for staying where I was. But I never had that desire (at the time)."

Chris Dohrman's daughter, Cailyn, is a 15-year-old sophomore post player on the Lakeside varsity girls basketball team.

"My intention was to stay with the girls team," Dohrman said. "I was asked to apply for this job by the Lakeside High administration. It was something I did mainly to help out with the boys and their program."

AS FOR Lakeside moving down to Class 1A Division II next season, Dohrman prefers the way it used to be, when Lakeside, Mullan, Clark Fork, Kootenai and Wallace were all in the same division. The North Star League split into two divisions in football in 2004 and in boys and girls basketball in the 2008-2009 season.

"I wish we had just one division," Dohrman said. "We had our two seeds for state in all sports and even the district tournament we used to have for boys and girls basketball was an extremely fun event. It's not quite like that any more. The last couple of years, it's been about Wallace and us (in Division I). As we go down to Division II, it's Kootenai, Clark Fork, Mullan and us. That game versus Wallace does not quite have the significance it once had."

Bruce Bourquin is a sports writer at The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2013, or via email at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter @bourq25