THE FRONT ROW with Mark Nelke, October 6, 2013

Jake Plummer brought his pro handball tourney back to Coeur d'Alene this weekend after a year's absence.

Since the last time the World Players of Handball tour stopped at Peak Health and Wellness in 2011, Plummer has moved from Sandpoint to Boulder, Colo., where his wife has family; he's undergone arthroscopic surgery on both hips, and about 2 1/2 months ago, he and his wife welcomed their second son into the world.

Plummer, who has turned into a handball enthusiast and an ambassador for the sport in recent years, last played in April 2012, when he still lived in Sandpoint.

"It was getting to where playing was fun, but it was hurting real bad," said Plummer, the former Capital High, Arizona State and NFL quarterback. "When I got the MRIs and found out I had a torn labrum, cartilage was missing ... I figured I better get myself healthy."

He underwent surgery about a year ago and has been rehabbing since. He opted not to play in this year's tourney, loaded with many of the top pros in the U.S., while still on the mend, but vowed that "I'll be back on the court soon enough ... just a matter of time."

HANDBALL HAS grown a bit in the past two years as well.

This is the third year the WPH has had regular pro stops on their handball tour. More than 100 players came to Coeur d'Alene for this weekend's tour stop, dubbed the Plummer Family Helluva Handball Bash.

"There was a span of 15, 20 years where they didn't have a pro stop," Plummer said. "There was nowhere for these guys to go. There were a few tournaments that would give money, but not like a set group of pro stops that were set a year ahead."

He talks of a man named Fred Lewis, who has more than 500 kids learning the game of handball in the Tucson area. Plummer would like to see that enthusiasm expand nationwide.

Plummer worked with youths in Sandpoint, introducing them to the sport. He beams when he hears one of them is still playing in college, though he's there to play football. Another youth, he said, recently won a state handball title.

In Boulder, he has worked with a few young quarterbacks - but also makes them promise to play some handball with him in the offseason.

Putting on the tournament in Coeur d'Alene is almost a labor of love for Plummer.

"Me, I have this tournament, I help out the WPH, I love having those guys up, and I love handball," he said. "We run a first-class tournament with the help of a lot of local people. And I really like watching handball, so for me it's a weekend to sit and watch the best handball players in the world."

PLUMMER ON a few non-handball topics:

* On former Coeur d'Alene High star quarterback Chad Chalich excelling so soon as a redshirt freshman at Idaho: "He seemed like a real smart kid anyway," said Plummer, who watched him play as a senior, when Jake was a volunteer assistant at Sandpoint. "From when I watched him play, he made great decisions. He threw the ball a lot from shotgun, if I remember right, and threw it all over the field, which is what they're doing at Idaho. In this day and age, I think those systems they're running, they're not the most complicated thing in the world, and a lot of times, protections are not so much an issue as they were back in the day. So it's not so much of a learning curve to learn every single O-lineman's call and everything."

* On whether Plummer, who became "Jake the Snake" at ASU for his ability to scramble, would have enjoyed playing in the spread offenses which are all the vogue these days: "If I grew up in that ... I'm sure it would have been exactly what I would have loved to do," he said. "I took a lot of hits anyway, but I was able to not take the big ones ... learn to dive out, and slide when you need, let them push you and not resist as much."

* On the proliferation of social media these days, something that might have been in its infancy when Plummer was still playing: "It's crazy, the door slams quick these days, quicker than when I was playing," he said. "I was lucky. I would have gotten benched halfway through my third season (at Arizona), I probably would have been a backup the rest of my career. I threw 27 picks my third year in the league after taking them to the playoffs. I had a bad thumb, couldn't squeeze the ball, I threw 27 picks. Think about that - we weren't winning in Arizona. I would have been thrown to the curb."

JAKE SAID he enjoyed the five years he and his family lived in Sandpoint, where aside from signing a few autographs for tourists, he was looked at "like a normal dude" who occasionally would stop by the Daily Bee office to visit with his brother, Eric, the Bee's sports editor.

You may have read in the Sports Illustrated story about him a year or so ago when he volunteered for the Sandpoint Senior Center, and one of his duties was delivering meals to senior citizens at their homes.

He was told by a woman to remember to write down his mileage, so he could get reimbursed.

"And I said 'It's OK, you guys don't need to reimburse me,'" Jake said.

It was then the woman found out he was a former NFL quarterback.

The back story:

He read in the paper where the Senior Center needed volunteers.

"They needed drivers, and people to do other some other things," he recalled. "I signed up to drive and I said, 'I'll rake leaves, too.'"

The first day Jake showed up, a woman sent him out to rake leaves.

"And I was like, 'Awesome. That's what I hoped I'd get to do,'" he said. "I went out and raked the leaves, and then I came back in ... "

By then, someone had told the woman who that was she had sent out to rake the leaves.

"That's Jake Plummer, and you told him to rake the leaves," she was told. "Ah, don't make him do that; that's not a pro quarterback's job."

"But that was just what I wanted to do," Jake said.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached by phone at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at CdAPressSports.