The pieces starting to fall into place

By this point in the regular season, high school teams have a lot better idea what they’ve got compared to the two-a-days of early August.

And believe it or not, it’s getting closer and closer to the start of regional tournaments in the coming weeks.

WHILE THE Post Falls boys soccer team holds a 3-6 record overall, the 0-3 mark in the 5A Inland Empire League has left them with a little work to do in the coming weeks.

In case you forgot, Post Falls finished runner-up in the state 5A title match last year, losing to Borah of Boise.

Post Falls has played two of three league matches on the road. The Trojans home to face Coeur d’Alene today at noon.

A bright spot in the season might have been Thursday’s 2-1 nonleague win against St. George’s of Spokane, where the Trojans outshot the Dragons 22-5.

“Both goals we scored were great goals,” Post Falls coach Gabe Lawson said. “It kind of gets a little frustrating when you’re dominating the possession of the game, but nothing is going into the net.”

Thank, or blame St. George’s goalkeeper Ethan Johnson — who finished with 12 saves — for that

“There’s days where things are frustrating and someone has a great day,” Lawson said. “And today was Ethan Johnson’s day. He played great. A number of those shots are goals any other time in any other match, but he just made some spectacular plays.”

With a handful of volleyball matches remaining in North Star League play, Lakeside has quietly won two straight matches, downing Mullan and Kootenai earlier this week to climb to 2-3 in league play.

Against Mullan, Lakeside finished with 13 aces as a team. The Knights will face North Idaho Christian today in a nonleague match at Holy Family Catholic School in Coeur d’Alene.

“It’s good to get started on a winning track,” Lakeside coach Brad Veile said. “We played some of the tougher schools in our league (Clark Fork twice and Genesis Prep) early on. So it’s nice to get the winning mentality going again.”

Still on the schedule are two games with Wallace, as well as facing all but Clark Fork — the Knights are done with them in the regular season — again.

GRANTED THAT it has been a few years since the Seattle Seahawks have had must-win mentioned in a game this early in the season.

Sunday has been mentioned as that in the home opener against Dallas.

Sure, the offense has looked awful in losses to Denver and Chicago and the Seahawks might want to do a better job of protecting the franchise quarterback before something happens, but they’ve been close.

Close doesn’t count for anything though, and a win Sunday might solve a lot of what’s wrong.

Those Seahawks fans that are long suffering — and there’s more than a few — know whatever happens this year is nothing like those lean years when the team was finishing last in the AFC West.

No matter how bad it seems now.

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.