THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE, Jan. 8, 2015
In past years, many high school basketball teams looked at the holiday break much like high school students did - a vacation lasting as much as two weeks.
But in recent years, Coeur d'Alene has gotten in to the holiday hoops tournament swing. This year, there were three local tournaments to choose from, each running Dec. 29-31.
The Coeur d'Alene Inn-vitational, a boys tournament these days after a few years of offering boys and girls tourneys, recently completed its seventh run last week at North Idaho College.
The Lake City Invitational boys tournament was held for the third time, and the Coeur d'Alene Winter Classic, a girls tourney at Coeur d'Alene High, made its debut.
And organizers of all three tourneys couldn't be accused of stacking the field with patsies so the local teams could have an easy road to the finals. As it turned out, only one local team made it to the finals - the Post Falls boys, who lost to Wilson of Tacoma, Wash.
The Coeur d'Alene Winter Classic was an all-Treasure Valley final, with Mountain View beating Rocky Mountain in a battle of Meridian teams.
At Lake City, Kentridge of Kent, Wash., beat Rocky Mountain in the title game.
But, despite all that, the real winners were local fans - as well as local teams looking for three games without having to travel massive distances.
ROCKY MOUNTAIN'S girls are coached these days by Emery Roy, a girls basketball coaching icon in the Treasure Valley for more than three decades.
Recent fans remember him coaching at Centennial for years - and several battles for Coeur d'Alene at state - before taking over at Rocky. But before that, he coached Meridian to four straight state titles in the early 1980s. The star of those teams was 6-foot-7 Tresa Spaulding, who went on to play at BYU. Her daughter, Jennifer Hamson, also 6-7, also played at BYU, finishing up last season.
In 1984, the year that streak ended, he brought the Warriors to the same Coeur d'Alene High gym for the state A-1 girls basketball tournament. Meridian lost in the first round to Sandpoint, which went on to lose to Coeur d'Alene in overtime in the title game - which, you may remember, was the game that put girls basketball on the map in Idaho.
Thirty years later, there he was again, on a bench in the Coeur d'Alene High gym.
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@CdAPressSports.