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A good year for the locals

| December 19, 2018 12:00 AM

To say that 2018 was eventful in area sports might be an understatement.

Post Falls wrestling romping to a state 5A title with a record-breaking 338.5 points was pretty great.

Sitting in the gymnasium at Skyview High in Nampa as Timberlake, the two-time state 3A girls basketball champion, had its run end in a semifinal game that had all the intensity of a title game, was another memorable event.

That following night, when the Post Falls girls ended Eagle’s unbeaten season with a win for the program’s second title since 2013, was yet another.

IT TAKES a lot of hard work to be successful in the sport of baseball.

Hours of batting practice, playing catch, sometimes when players might rather be somewhere other than the baseball field on a 90-degree day.

For the Coeur d’Alene Little League team, all that work paid off for them big-time.

Coeur d’Alene won a Northwest Regional championship, advancing to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa., and even beating Spain in a crossover game.

For all that attention, playing games on ESPN in those big stadiums, to see the team have some success for all the work they put in was great.

To see the community support for them when they returned home was also pretty cool to see.

AT THE start of the high school football season, there was a little bit of unknown when it came to some of the teams in the area.

We knew Coeur d’Alene was going to be good because, well, the Vikings have been good in recent years.

I’d been a little curious just how a co-op between two different schools in different states might turn out, but it wound up being a gamechanger for the Mullan/St. Regis Tigers.

Without it, it’s possible neither school might have had a football season, or at the least, those game might have been of the 6-man variety.

When Post Falls replaced 21 of 22 starters from its 2017 squad, the Trojans might have been the biggest question of all at the start of the season.

With a group of mostly juniors and sophomores, Post Falls advanced to the 5A quarterfinals after beating Skyview in the opening round.

And who knows, with a little more experience next year, maybe the Trojans find a way to get a little deeper in the playoffs.

IT IS a rare feat for someone to have the kind of success at the Tri-State Invitational that Post Falls senior Ridge Lovett had.

Lovett pinned Kamiakin’s Austin Almaguer to win at Tri-State for the fourth straight year. Up until Saturday, only three wrestlers had done that.

Three, in 48 years of the prestigious tournament at North Idaho College.

You might have a better chance of winning the lottery than winning four straight titles at Tri-State.

Even better than that, if you were able to witness any of these moments yourself, it might feel like you won something.

For those that were there, they did indeed.

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 @JECdAPress.