THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE, Dec. 21, 2014

It was like déjá vu all over again, interviewing the Sandpoint High girls basketball coach last week.

My first experience interviewing him was in the mid 1980s, when he coached the Sandpoint High boys. I covered him again about a decade later, when he was coaching the Sandpoint girls.

A week ago Friday, we were back at it again, me asking questions and him trying to make sense of them with his answers outside the locker room at Lake City High, after the Bulldog girls lost to the Timberwolves.

“It’s fun — it’s a little more intense than coaching at the middle school, but it’s fun,” Duane Ward said with a laugh.

WARD GUIDED the Bulldog girls to a second-place finish at state in 1996.

He stepped down a year or two after that, and for the past decade or so, coached the seventh-grade girls at Sandpoint Middle School for a few years, then coached the eighth-grade girls for a few years.

Asked how the game has changed since he last coached at the high school level some 15 years ago, Ward quickly replied, “It hasn’t. The game’s the same as it’s always been. You know how that stuff goes, a lot of these guys think some of this stuff is new, but if they’re as old as you and I, they’ve saw it before.”

Ward is 71. I am ... younger than that.

Ward started coaching in Sandpoint in 1966, coaching basketball, football and track. Since then, he’s coached hoops at nearly every level there — city rec, ninth grade, sophomores, junior varsity, varsity boys, varsity girls.

(Full disclosure — I even coached against Ward in city rec. He won that game too.)

“I even coached cross country with coach (Cheryl) Klein,” Ward said.

As Sandpoint girls coach, Ward succeeded Bill Bender, who resigned after two seasons. Last year, the Bulldogs won their first regional title since 1982, and qualified for state for the first time since 2004.

“I didn’t know if I wanted to do it, to be honest with you,” Ward said.

But he wanted to make sure the Bulldogs hired a coach with experience, so he threw his hat in the ring. At the time, there were only two applicants — and one had never coached before.

When Ward was hired, one of his first moves was to hire Will Love, a Sandpoint grad and a Bulldog boys assistant coach the past few seasons, as his assistant.

“I went after him hard, because he’s a good coach,” Ward said. “He knows basketball, and he’s extremely good with the kids, and he can relate really well with the kids. We’re really like co-coaches. He keeps me calmed down, he’s got lots of good ideas. He coached with Tyler (Haynes) for a while, so he’s got a good background, and he comes from a good family, and he’s a nice guy.”

Ward coached his daughter, Natalie, on those Sandpoint High teams in the mid-1990s. This season, he’s coaching a granddaughter, — Taylor, his son Jeff’s daughter — on the varsity.

Asked how long he plans to keep coaching, Ward replied, “I don’t know ... I don’t have anything else to do.”

Either way, he’s glad to be back on a varsity bench.

“Actually, (being away) kind of allowed me to sit back and look at things, and maybe get a little better perspective. And I think that’s helped me,” Ward said. “I’m probably more patient, than I used to be.”

ANOTHER HOUR or two later, inside the visiting locker room at Lake City, it was another case of déjá vu — only this time, the coach was wearing a black shirt, rather than the familiar blue of Coeur d’Alene High, where he coached from 2003-13.

“I’m having fun with them,” said Kent Leiss, in his first season as Sandpoint High boys coach. “If we just keep getting better, by the end of the year, we’re not going to be easy to play against, because the kids are learning to play hard. And I think they’re kind of struggling with my expectations, but they’re getting better.”

Leiss said this is the fourth time he’s come in to rebuild a program, doing it in Minnesota and at Flathead of Kalispell, Mont., before coming to Coeur d’Alene.

He’s liking this challenge in particular “because I see the kids starting to get it.”

Like his teams at Coeur d’Alene, he wants the Bulldogs to play fast.

“And when we don’t have enough scorers it’s going to look odd, but that’s just the way we’re going to look,” he said. “I don’t think we’d be real successful in a half-court game without scorers, so we’re trying to create a fast tempo and get some easy buckets.”

Leiss is stressing that his players get in the weight room, like the Bulldog football team, to help them get in better condition to play at a faster pace. Sandpoint has taken some lumps early, but there have been encouraging signs.

“So I’m excited about these guys,” Leiss said.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.