THE FRONT ROW with Bruce Bourquin, Sept. 20, 2013

Hello, folks.

My name is Bruce Bourquin and I am the new sports writer and page designer at The Press. I will be at quite a few ballgames and I'll take quite a few phone calls this season and beyond.

I have worked as a full-time sports reporter and page designer for six years. I'm 35 years old, I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in Redlands, Calif., about an hour or two hours' drive east of Los Angeles, depending on freeway traffic.

I spent the past four years earning my master's degree in communications from Cal State Fullerton, which is about an hour's drive east of Los Angeles, again, depending on rush-hour traffic. Yep, we have such a thing down there. Go, Titans! I know Californians aren't well-liked around here, so please don't hold that against me too much!

I also earned my undergrad degree from San Diego State University and was a sports intern at KGTV, the ABC affiliate down there.

I also worked as a freelance reporter for such organizations as The Associated Press, NHL.com, The Orange County Register, The Daily Pilot - a Los Angeles Times-owned daily paper out of Costa Mesa, Patch.com and Junior Baseball Magazine.

I worked from 2003-2008 at The Sierra Vista Herald/Bisbee Daily Review in Sierra Vista, Ariz., about 75 miles southeast of Tucson, and from 2001-2003 at The Porterville Recorder in Porterville, Calif., about an hour south of Fresno. I covered prep sports and some college athletics, mostly at the community college levels.

So I'm no spring chicken.

Here's looking forward to many fun game stories, feature articles, columns and other things.

I HAVE spent about a month here and have loved it so far. I know the winter months can get pretty chilly, but I'm fairly used to cold winters, spending some vacations with my family in northwest Ohio. So bring it on!

I have covered a few games here and can honestly say that several Coeur d'Alene-area teams can certainly hang in there, if not defeat, teams from southern California. Honestly.

I've seen both pretty good and fairly bad teams in both California and Arizona and trust me, your Coeur d'Alene Vikings, Lake City Timberwolves, Post Falls Trojans and Lakeland Hawks would probably be considered favored against like-sized teams. Private schools, like Mater Dei, which can recruit all-star teams from across southern California? Not so much. But the public schools, yeah, these schools would have few problems competing against them.

I AM also getting to know the University of Idaho, Eastern Washington University, the University of Washington, Washington State and Gonzaga University sports teams, as well as universities in Montana, Utah and elsewhere.

It's nice to see several Kootenai County athletes go on to play and attend school at the next level. Some of my favorite stories to write are on athletes who go on and become someone at big-time college and even pro levels. There are a couple of San Diego Padres playing right now - infielder Jedd Gyorko and outfielder Reymond Fuentes - who I wrote features on back when they were minor leaguers a couple of years ago.

It's nice to see them honing their craft in the big leagues. I like seeing a few college athletes here and there and think to myself, 'Wow, I wrote about them back when they were in high school.' I look forward to doing the same here in Coeur d'Alene over the next few years.

Bruce Bourquin is a sports writer at The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2013, or via email at bbourquin@cdapress.com