Best of both worlds

Second-year Eastern Washington head football coach Aaron Best has North Idaho ties.

His father, Terry, played at Coeur d’Alene High in the early 1970s.

Terry later played at Walla Walla Community College and then at the University of Idaho, where one of his teammates was Mike Kramer, who went on to become head coach at Eastern Washington, Montana State and Idaho State.

“Sanders Beach was like a home away from home,” Aaron Best recalled growing up.

In fact, while on the coaching staff at Eastern, Best would sometimes drive over to North Idaho after an Eagle home game, to a place his dad had on the north end of Lake Coeur d’Alene by Beauty Bay, where he would unwind before heading back to Cheney on Sunday for the team meeting.

“A chance to hang out away from everything,” Best said.

Best, an EWU alum, spent 14 seasons as the Eagles’ offensive line coach before taking over as head coach last season, replacing Beau Baldwin.

Under Best, the Eags opened with a 56-10 loss in a “money” game at Texas Tech, then lost 40-13 at home to FCS power North Dakota State.

They entered Big Sky play at 1-2, then went 6-2 in league. But back-to-back losses, at Southern Utah and then at home to Weber State, ultimately kept Eastern out of the FCS playoffs as the Eags did not receive an at-large bid to the 24-team playoff.

Missing the playoffs has been the exception, rather than the rule, at Eastern this decade.

In Baldwin’s nine seasons as head coach at EWU, the Eagles made the playoffs six times, including winning a national championship in 2010.

“The benchmark is the playoffs at Eastern,” Best said earlier this week, at the Big Sky media day in Spokane. “So when you don’t make it, you didn’t meet the benchmark, and you have to find a way to get back to the benchmark.”

The other coaches in the Big Sky, and the media that follow the league, evidently think Eastern will be “back” this year.

The coaches and media both picked the Eagles to win the conference this year.

“It probably ultimately helps that our quarterback (Gage Gubrud) comes back,” Best said of the two-time finalist for the Walter Payton Award, given to the top player in the Football Championship Subdivision. “I think Gage coming back enhanced the idea that we could see ourselves at the top. But the parity of this league is at a level I have never seen, and I’ve been a part of this league for two decades.”

Gubrud, a senior from McMinnville, Ore., has thrown for 8,568 yards in 27 games as an Eagle, and is on pace to break a variety of EWU and Big Sky career records this fall.

Not only was there a new head coach at Eastern last year, there was big-time turnover throughout the coaching staff.

“Half the room was different as coaches,” Best said. “I thought it would be less hectic to make those changes. Having been at Eastern forever, I thought, ‘We’ll plug and we’ll play.’ I underestimated that. And not being a head coach before, it’s like having three kids and saying, ‘I’m going to exchange you two for you two.’ You think they’re going to pick up where the others left off. It’s certainly more challenging than you anticipated — because coaches need to speak the same language, and coaches coming in have to speak the Eastern language.”

As for this year ...

“We’re light years ahead of where we were last year, just based on sheer continuity,” Best said. “We were drinking out of the fire hose last year. I wouldn’t say it’s drinking out of the fire hose (this year), but there’s definitely a garden hose with some PSI coming out of it.”

Only a handful of North Idaho kids have played at Eastern over the years, most notably linemen Kurt and Kraig Sigler from Coeur d’Alene High roughly two decades ago.

But Best says it’s not for lack of trying by the coaching staff. But the out-of-state tuition EWU would have to pay for scholarships for North Idaho players, plus an emphasis on recruiting players from the state of Washington, limits the number of kids from this area who wind up in Cheney.

“We recruit more guys (from North Idaho) than what the public knows … they don’t go unnoticed,” Best said.

Refreshingly, Best tries to balance football and family. When it’s time for football season, he’s all in on that.

But family is important as well for Best, who has been married for 11 years and has three children — a son and two daughters.

“When I’m away from football, selfishly I like to stay away from football as much as I can,” Best said. “You won’t find any napkins around my house with drawings on them.”