THE FRONT ROW WITH MARK NELKE: Feb. 16, 2014
One thing was for sure last week - it was a LONG time since the Sandpoint High girls basketball team had won a regional championship.
But exactly how long? No one really knew.
2004, someone thought.
Or maybe it was 2003, someone else said.
Perhaps 1996?
Sometime in the 1980s?
The good news (for research purposes, anyway) was, Sandpoint hasn't been to state very often over the past 30 years, so that made it a little easier to narrow down.
After plowing through records we've kept over the past couple decades, and a few morgue books from the early 1980s (and noticing a few names in there that still make it into the paper today), we found the answer:
1982 - Sandpoint beat Lewiston 2-1 in a best-of-3 series for the A-1 Region 1 title. That was after Lewiston beat Coeur d'Alene in a best-of-3 series to advance to the championship series.
Whoever ran the Inland Empire League back then must have been fans of the NBA.
SINCE THAT last regional title?
First, a little background.
Sandpoint appeared to embrace Title IX in the 1970s, rather than fight it. So by the time I rolled into town to begin working at the Daily Bee in August 1982, not only was Sandpoint High strong in volleyball, but also really good in girls basketball (of course, it helped that most of the good volleyball players also played basketball).
Anyway, Sandpoint had one of the top girls basketball programs in the state - but just couldn't get past Meridian, led by 6-foot-7 Tresa Spaulding, who would later go on and play at BYU (and has a 6-7 daughter who is a senior on the current BYU squad). Meridian hasn't been players at state much since then, but the Warriors, coached back then by Emery Roy, won state hoops titles in 1980, '81, '82 and '83 - beating Sandpoint in the title game in '82 and '83.
By 1984, Spaulding had graduated from Meridian, and Sandpoint, with another strong squad led by Michelle Chastain, finally conquered the Warriors - in the first round at state.
But a new threat was emerging by then - the Coeur d'Alene Vikings.
The Vikings beat the Bulldogs for the Region 1 title in 1983 and '84. Then, in the game that is widely regarded as putting high school girls basketball on the map in Idaho, Coeur d'Alene beat Sandpoint in overtime in the state title game in '84, in front of a standing-room-only crowd at Coeur d'Alene High.
SANDPOINT THEN went through some lean years in girls basketball. It would be 10 more years before the Bulldogs returned to state.
Then, a talented group led by Alli Nieman, Tanya Allmaras and others got Sandpoint back to state in 1994. Two years later, with Nieman and Allmaras as seniors, the Bulldogs won the IEL title - but Lake City, a school in its second year, upset Sandpoint for the regional title. The Bulldogs won a play-in game to state and made it to the title game, where they lost to Centennial, where Roy had moved on to by then (he is now at Rocky Mountain, which is headed to this week's state 5A tourney).
Sandpoint then went through another lull, not returning to state until 2003 and '04, teams which included guards Shandi Keller in '03 and Ashleigh Mire in '04. But the Bulldogs needed the play-in route to get there both years - Post Falls won regionals in 2003, en route to its second straight state title, and Moscow won in 2004.
Which leads us to today, and a current group of talented Bulldog girls, who appear fundamentally sound and look like they enjoy playing together, trying to make a name for themselves.
In one respect, they already did - having accomplished something that hadn't been done in Sandpoint for more than three decades.
Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at CdAPressSports.