THE FRONT ROW with Bruce Bourquin, Sept. 27, 2013

Debbie Buchanan has had a lengthy coaching career leading the University of Idaho volleyball team.

On Sept. 12, the Vandals beat Boise State 16-25, 28-26, 14-25, 25-22, 15-13. The win was the 200th of Buchanan's career, which stretches 14 seasons as she is the longest-tenured coach in Idaho volleyball history.

The product of St. Maries took a moment to talk about her career, whether she wants to stay coaching the Vandals, her knee injury that changed her collegiate playing fate and her team's chances of winning the Western Athletic Conference.

AFTER THURSDAY'S Western Athletic Conference opener against Utah Valley, Buchanan's career record is 203-194 and she is the winningest coach in program history. In 2011, she was chosen as the College Coach of the Year by the North Idaho Hall of Fame.

"It's obviously a great accomplishment," Buchanan said of reaching her 200th career win. "It's taken a lot of people, a lot of great players, a lot of great coaches as far as my support staff. It's been a team effort the last 14 years and definitely not something that was in my mind. I wasn't even aware of it until right before the match."

Buchanan was all-everything as a high school volleyball star at St. Maries. From 1987-90, she helped lead the Lumberjacks to four consecutive state A-2 championships. She was a three-time all-state tournament selection and also played on the St. Maries girls basketball team that won a state championship in 1988.

SHE EARNED a volleyball scholarship to USC. But early in her senior season of basketball at St. Maries, she suffered a knee injury.

"Basically we were doing an out-of-bounds play," Buchanan said of the injury. "I went to turn and my shoe just stuck and my knee just rotated and I tore my lateral meniscus. I got it repaired and went to 'SC and played (volleyball) my freshman year. In the spring we were doing some drills and it was a fluke thing, where another player ran into me and we collided and I retore my knee. I had another surgery, tried to come back and play. I also think maybe I came back too soon. At that point, my knee kept swelling and it was a lot of degenerative tissue, where the soft part of the tissue was kind of chipping away. There were hundreds of little pieces that were tearing away (inside my knee). By the time I had that surgery and tried to come back in my sophomore year, it never really bounced back."

USC allowed her to become a student assistant, where in earnest she learned how to become a coach. Working hard behind the scenes, Buchanan assisted with practices, camps, edited game film, managed home events and assisted with booster clubs and fundraising events.

Buchanan still feels the pain of her injury, even today.

"And still to this day, I think I've had five surgeries on it," said Buchanan, 40. "I'm going to have to have knee replacement surgery one day but apparently I'm too young (now)."

In 1996, Buchanan graduated with a degree in education, with an emphasis in science.

Buchanan said she probably would have gone into coaching anyway, had the injury not happened.

"I think I would have," Buchanan said. "But I don't think it would've led me here. It's always hard to know because I would've played and I wouldn't have had the (student assistant) experience under my belt that I would've had.

"The hardest thing I ever went through was to have an injury. USC allowed me to join the coaching staff and kind of get involved with breaking film down and some of the day-to-day stuff that you don't normally pay attention to when you're a college athlete. I started coaching club on the side. I think because of that, it opened the door for me a little earlier maybe than it would have if I kept playing."

BUCHANAN HAS fond memories of being one of St. Maries' best volleyball players in the program's history.

"We were pretty dominant back in the day," she recalled. "We were in the middle of nowhere. It was one of those things where everything revolved around sports and if you were making the right decisions I knew that I wanted to go on and play. I definitely had opportunities and went to summer camps. I got to go down to Sacramento, San Jose and played there. Between the club stuff and playing high school, I got to be seen by some college coaches. I started gettting recruited, it was really from going out and doing something extra."

Buchanan and her family (husband Buck, a sales representative for Odom Corporation Wholesale Beverage Distributors, located in Spokane; and two sons, Austin, 12, a seventh grader; and Blake, 9, a fourth-grader) gets to visit St. Maries fairly often and she ran a volleyball camp there this past summer. They own property in the area and most of her relatives still live in St. Maries.

In 1996, after she graduated from USC, Buchanan served as the top assistant coach at Idaho to former head coach Tom Hilbert for one season. In 1997, she followed Hilbert to Colorado State to become his assistant with the Rams from 1997-99. In 2000, she was hired at Idaho.

THERE HAVE been offers to coach elsewhere have presented themselves to Buchanan, but she says she's happy in Moscow.

"As a coach, for one we're thankful, anytime you can stay at a place for a long period of time," Buchanan said. "A lot of coaches haven't been able to stay at one place. I have had some other job opportunities. One of the things that my husband and I decided a while back was we were not just going to chase a salary and try to move our kids all over the place. We wanted to be in a stable environment with our kids, around family. My husband's from Seattle so we wanted to be in a place where we could still have our family and professionally do the things that we wanted."

"The grass isn't always greener on the other side. Sometimes as coaches we go, 'I need to make a move, I need to make this jump' and that's not always the best option. We've been fortunate to have an athletic director that's very pro-women's athletics, gives support to programs and comes to our matches. Not very many athletic directors across the country are as involved and that's one of the reasons that I've stayed here is I've felt we've gotten that attention and we're always striving to make things better ... we're out there trying to recruit the best kids we can get."

UNDER BUCHANAN, the Vandals are coming off back-to-back second-place finishes in the Western Athletic Conference. She guided Idaho to the NCAA tournament in 2003 and '04.

"I think there's two ways to look at it," Buchanan said of her success. "We want to win championships, we want to get to the NCAA tournament and that's what it's all about. I guess when I look back and look at each year, honestly I can't tell you what my records were in some years. In 2009 we were ranked in the top four in the country in blocking. We were recognized by the NCAA, we've been honored with academic awards for having a team GPA of above 3.3. I guess when I look back at it, it's about the kids and how they develop each year and how much they change when they come in."

Buchanan likes her team's chances at trying to win a WAC title.

"I think we have a shot," Buchanan said. "It's hard to tell right now, we haven't really seen any conference play yet (before Thursday). We are a young team, so far this season we've been playing three freshmen, four sophomores, two seniors and a junior. So I think we definitely have the potential if we can keep our passing up. If we get better every day, we have a chance to be in the championship."

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