THE FRONT ROW WITH MARK NELKE: May 18, 2014

When Bill Adams first met Ron Hunt, Ron had already been living in Bill's house for three months.

Huh? There's a story behind that.

The year was 1970. Bill was living in Billings, Mont., where his wife, Delores, was finishing up her degree at what was then called Eastern Montana. They still had their house in Cocolalla.

Bill got a phone call from Ken Beaudoin, who was athletic director at Sandpoint High at the time. The Bulldogs had an opening for a boys basketball coach.

"We have a basketball coach," Beaudoin told Bill. "But he doesn't have a place to stay. Can he stay at your house?"

Three months later, Delores was done with her classes, and she and Bill returned home to Cocolalla.

"The very first time I met (Ron) was when I walked into my house," Bill recalled. "And from that day on, we hit it off."

HUNT, WHO died last month at age 74, coached football and basketball at Sandpoint in some capacity for some 25 years.

Adams was Hunt's assistant in the early 1970s. In the early '80s, Hunt was Adams' assistant. Or something like that, Bill said. In places like Sandpoint, coaches tend to rotate through the programs.

"It was a good relationship because we thought alike," Adams recalled. "He's nine days younger than I am. Both of us had three kids, both graduated high school at the same time, both of us played sports in college, we both drove a school bus. People used to call us brothers, because we had so much in common."

Bill Adams was the best man at Ron Hunt's wedding in 1973, which made sense because Bill and the Beaudoins were responsible for bringing Ron Hunt and Linda Miller together.

A graduate of Baker (Ore.) High, Hunt played basketball at Idaho, Eastern Oregon and Boise Junior College.

He played semi-pro baseball, and taught and coached in New Plymouth, Meridian and Payette, as well as Endicott, Wash., before moving to Sandpoint.

I FIRST met Ron Hunt in the fall of 1982, when he was the junior varsity boys basketball coach at Sandpoint High.

I remembered him as an old school coach, and I noticed he had some sort of little black box that he rested his feet on when he sat in his chair and coached.

"He used to sit with his feet on the medicine kit," Bill recalled. "And when something good would happen, he'd jump up, and he'd come down and he'd miss it and would come down on his bum."

Yes, he took some ribbing for it.

"Sometimes he'd come down on the edge (of the medicine kit)," Bill said. "Sometimes he'd miss the whole thing; sometimes he'd land in the chair."

Years later, he coached the freshman girls basketball team, dutifully calling in his scores - after he had gotten home and enjoyed his bowl of ice cream.

Perhaps the old-school coach had mellowed a bit by then.

In the '90s, He coached the Alli Nieman-led Bulldog girls basketball team for a few seasons, leading them to state once, stepping down after her junior year as Duane Ward stepped in and guided the team to the state title game the next season.

"He was an old-school guy throughout, and the players had to do it right," Bill said. "And if it wasn't right, you stayed there until you got it done. And usually, it was pretty close to being right."

WHAT BILL Adams liked about Ron Hunt when Hunt was head coach and Bill was assistant was, Ron would run ideas by Bill, to see what he thought. In the end Ron would make the final call, but at least Bill had some input.

"What I miss most about him was visiting, and not necessarily about sports," said Bill Adams, now 74. "Then we'd start talking about (basketball) - maybe this would work with boys, maybe this would work with girls ... "

"Ron, he was old school, but he was meticulous in what he did," Bill said. "He did not stand for mediocrity."

With his flat-top haircut and that old-school demeanor and his passion for Sandpoint High athletics, Ron Hunt was a true Bulldog.

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.