THE FRONT ROW with BRUCE BOURQUIN July 29, 2016

Jack Smith, a 1979 Lakeland High graduate who grew up in Spirit Lake and in Nevada’s capital city of Carson City, could possibly fulfill a dream to wrap up his coaching career in this area.

Would he possibly consider a return to coach at Lakeland, Timberlake, or in say, North Idaho or eastern Washington?

You betcha. He occasionally visits these parts and when his father, Moe Smith, was alive, he came every July.

“I follow Lakeland, Post Falls, Timberlake super closely,” Smith said. “I follow North Idaho basketball probably more than I follow teams in Nevada, I’m reading it in the paper every day about them. I’m on Hometown News all the time. I think about it (possibly coaching in this area) all the time. There’s a side of me wants to come up there and coach. I have four more years, then I’ll be 60 and I’ll have 28 years. Post Falls (girls basketball) coach Marc Allert knew me from Lakeland. If fate had it where I came up, a dream of mine is to coach in North Idaho.”

Smith played quite a few sports at Lakeland, including football as a fullback and linebacker, baseball and boxing, suffering a shattered collarbone in a game against Wallace along the way. Then he earned a scholarship to compete in the pole vault at North Idaho College, winning a few meets. He graduated from Nevada-Reno, where he said he attended college “on the 10-year plan,” and boxed on the college team at the ripe old age of 32 back in 1993.

Jack Smith, 56, is also the son of boxing promoter Moe Smith, who died of a stroke in Coeur d’Alene on Oct. 22, 2013. He promoted fights for the Coeur d’Alene Casino House of Fury and also helped put together fights called “Cow Pasture” bouts in Gardenerville, Nev., literally in a cow pasture, which toward the end of its run were telecast by ESPN.

Moe got divorced from his first wife, then he moved to Spirit Lake.

“My dad and I jumped around the country,” Smith said. “Dad thought guys like Pat Duncan would be a heavyweight champion — he was famous for his time. In 1970, my dad’s friend opened a bar called the Linger Longer in Spirit Lake. My dad opened the White Horse Saloon next door, which is still there. Pat lost a fight and moved back to Carson City, then some people asked my dad to run the joint. that’s how I moved there (to Spirit Lake in 1970).”

To say Jack Smith has had a successful basketball coaching career in Nevada is an understatement.

He’s won three state championships with two different high schools, the Lowry girls hoops team of Winnemucca in 2010 and 1998-99 with the McQueen girls of Reno. He’s compiled a hearty 302 wins over 28 years, with 249 losses, was Nevada prep all-classification coach of the year in 2001, 2008 3A coach of the year, and 3A state coach of the year in 2010.

TODAY SMITH is coaching boys basketball at McDermitt in McDermitt, Nev., right at the Nevada-Oregon border and an hour north of Winnemucca. Smith is a physical education and weights teacher at McDermitt, and has coached there for three seasons.

“I’m doing well,” Smith said. “In 2014, in the state playoffs, we were beat by defending state champions, Winttell from Lake Tahoe. Last year, we had the equivalent of a JV team but we went 18-7. Next year, I think we should make a nice jump.”

Last season, his team went through an unfortunate turn of events at the last second, so to speak, that cost them the league title. But it sums up the nature of the sport, that anything can happen at just about any time.

“It was the last league game of the year,” Smith recalled. “It was back and forth. They were up 13, at halftime we were up 13. With 10 seconds to go in the game, we were down one. My point guard hit a shot with seven seconds to go to put us up one.”

McDermitt then got the ball back, still up by one.

“All we had to do was throw the ball inbounds from the side and we had a series of fluke things,” Smith said. “We didn’t have any timeouts, or else I would have called a basic out-of-bounds play. Then my point guard thought, for some reason, he was going to get an over-in-back; he caught the ball in the air and normally he’d dribble the clock out. He flicked it 15 feet ahead to one of our players, who caught it with one hand and he was falling out of bounds. He kind of flicked it right next to another kid to our team and for some reason, our kid flicks it with his wrist 60 feet, all the way down to the Eureka end. The Eureka kids are standing there like, ‘Thank you, God’ and their kid makes a layup.

“It looked like something out of a blooper reel. It was a shame, because it was such a great basketball game. Our point guard was so upset he fell to the ground and broke his hand. The biggest thing was I’d never seen a series of events happen, it was a stunned house. It was painful.”

Winnemucca is in north-central Nevada, 195 miles northeast of Carson City. Jack Smith began his coaching career with Virginia City in 1987, then coached girls basketball at what was then a brand-new school, Galena High, where he coached from 1992-96. Then he took home state championships with McQueen, which had won state titles in 1996 and 1997 before he got there.

He then left after two state titles at McQueen to coach at Hug High in Reno, from 1999-2003.

“I had to kick everyone off the team and I got six kids to stick around (along with some JV players) and they bought into my coaching style,” Smith said. “I had to set the tone. We were 5-20 our first year (in 1999-2000), but I changed that culture quick. The coach before me just let them talk to him however they wanted, show up to practices wherever they wanted. In 2001, we had the best season in school history (20-9). During that season, I probably would have never left Hug High School, but there was a principal at Wooster, Steve Rackie, who followed me around. He came up to me after one of my games and said to me, ‘I like your style.’ He recruited me away from Hug. I wish I never did it because when I went to Wooster, he (Rackie) died four months later.”

He left for Lowry in 2007, where 20-win seasons were the norm under Smith. He had one losing season in six years, reaching the state finals twice, the semis once and the district finals twice, before leaving in 2013.

IN 2012, Smith also appeared on a DVD called “The Unpredictable Run and Jump Full Court Defense,” which is available on amazon.com. He made the DVD with John Saintignon, who led the nation in scoring in 1986 with then-Division III University of Santa Cruz, and now runs a basketball academy called the Orange County Magic.

“In 2010, he had me coach pros in Vegas who were from Europe and China, who were in the NBA Summer League but down a notch (from NBA players),” Smith said. “He (Saintignon) asked me to go to China twice, but it didn’t fit with my (schedule). it was a big honor as a high school coach.

“Once I retire, I might go to China with John to be an assistant coach,” Smith said.

But before that, Jack Smith may have a coaching itch to scratch back in North Idaho.

Bruce Bourquin is a sports writer at The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2013, via e-mail at bbourquin@cdapress.com or via Twitter @bourq25