THE FRONT ROW WITH JASON ELLIOTT: Saturday, May 28, 2016

You’ll have to excuse Zach Clanton for being a little tardy to the start of the Coeur d’Alene Lumbermen AA American Legion baseball season this year.

He’s got a really good excuse.

CLANTON WAS recently named head baseball coach at Wenatchee Valley Community College, where he served as the school’s pitching coach the past two seasons.

“I found out that I was going to be the coach in December,” Clanton said. “But I kind of had to hold it in.”

Clanton replaces Dustin Willis, who coached at the school since 2011. Wenatchee Valley was 5-35 last season.

“I’m kind of giddy to get going and scratching at the bit to get started,” Clanton said. “I’m just trying to lay down a blueprint of how I want things to go this season.”

That blueprint will be apparent during the Legion baseball season this year.

“I’ve already told (Lums assistant coaches) (CJ) Ketron and (Cody) Spencer that’s what my goal is,” Clanton said. “I’m excited for this summer, and next year too.”

Clanton made offers to Lake City High seniors Jarred Hall and Cody Garza to play for him at Wenatchee Valley, but both opted to sign with East Region rival Yakima Valley Community College. Yakima Valley won the East Region.

“It’s going to be an interesting dynamic between Cody, Jarred and I this year,” Clanton said. “What’s cool about it is that I made them both offers, but I was going to be happy for them wherever they wound up regardless.”

Hall called Clanton when he made his final decision.

“When he called me, he told me that he hoped it didn’t affect us and this summer,” Clanton said. “I coach and do this for Coeur d’Alene baseball. I just want to make sure they guys are prepared for the next step and want them to grow to become mature young men. We’re going to have a great summer on the field. Then starting next fall, I told them I want to break their hearts when we play.”

Locals on the Wenatchee Valley roster include: Kenny Cooper (Lakeland), Gibson Green (Coeur d’Alene), Connor Cardinel (Coeur d’Alene) and Steven Vaudreuil (Lake City), who can all return for their sophomore seasons next fall. Kolby DeHaas, a Coeur d’Alene High grad, was a sophomore on this year’s squad.

“I don’t think that the position in Wenatchee and with the Legion program are exclusive,” Clanton said. “It doesn’t mean I’m going to recruit everyone on my team. What I want to do is the best I can to help them develop and get a taste of what the game is like at the college level.”

CHANCES ARE, the Seattle Seahawks will once again be in the mix for the NFC West championship, if not home field advantage throughout the playoffs if they play their cards right.

But at this point, aren’t fans looking for a little more than that?

With the recent success of the team — and there’s been a lot since Pete Carroll arrived in town — the Seahawks have contended for the Super Bowl in the last four years, advancing to two championship games and even winning one.

It might be considered greedy — it really is — to think that anything less than a deep run into the playoffs is a failure at this point for the Seahawks.

At some point in the 1980s and early 90s, it seemed as if you couldn’t play a conference championship game without the San Francisco 49ers or Dallas Cowboys taking the field on that particular day.

And with most of the same cast of main characters back in the mix this season for Seattle, it’s hard to not be confident the team will return to the Super Bowl for the third time in four years.

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at (208) 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at jelliott@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JEPressSports.