A 'sideways sticker-outer,' and other gym stories (Part 3)

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Tina Foldvik was “what I would call a classic Lakeland player,” Hawks girls basketball coach Steve Seymour recalled.

“Undersized post, leading rebounder, great defender, never complained ... ” he said.

Little did she know — and little did Seymour know — that they would need a little bit of help from the opposing coach before the night was through.

But first ...

It was the 1997-98 season, as the story goes, and Lakeland was scheduled to play at Sandpoint, back before the two teams were in the same league.

They were scheduled to play in the “new” Sandpoint High gym, which was nearly a decade old by then. But sometimes the gym roof leaked when it snowed or rained.

This was one of those times, so the game was moved to the old Bulldog Gym at nearby Sandpoint Middle School, roughly a stone’s throw away.

“We didn’t know we were playing in the old “pit” until we rolled up there,” said Seymour, who back then was in his third season as Lakeland coach. He recently completed his 24th season as Hawks coach.

The Lakeland bus unknowingly pulled up in front of the high school, rather than the middle school.

“It was like a scene out of a Stephen King movie,” Seymour said. “All the snow, dark, nobody around, all of a sudden you hear this voice beckoning out of the darkness — ‘We’re over here ... ’”

It was Jack Dyck, athletic director at Sandpoint High at the time.

“Somehow it didn’t get communicated that we were playing in the old gym,” Seymour said.

AT SOME point in the game — the memories of Seymour and Duane Ward, who was Sandpoint’s girls coach at the time, differ — Foldvik suffered a dislocated finger.

“She came out of the game and said, ‘Oh my gosh, look at my finger,’ and it was a sideways sticker-outer,” Seymour said.

“OK,” Seymour thought at the time. “I know that older coaches set these, and some coaches don’t set them and take them to the hospital.”

He turned to his assistant coach at the time, Deana Lange — who is still his assistant.

“What do we do?” he asked.

“And I looked over at the bench and there’s Duane Ward,” Seymour said.

By then, Ward had coached in Sandpoint at one level or another for nearly three decades.

“He’s probably reset more fingers than we have on this entire team,” Seymour figured. “I know it was kinda weird, but at that point Duane and I have since become really good friends, and at that point I certainly admired and respected him enough that I felt comfortable enough, during the game, while it was still going on. I just said, ‘Hey coach?’

“He kinda looked at me like, ‘What?’

“I said, ‘Will you take a look at this?’

“He took a look and said, ‘Oh, yeah.’

“I said, ‘I don’t feel comfortable setting this’ and he said ‘Oh, OK, I got this.’

“He said (to Foldvik), ‘Look away, honey,’ and he kinda pops it back into place and I was like, ‘Oh, wow, OK.’

Sandpoint went on to win 42-25.

“I still don’t feel very comfortable doing that, or even looking at fingers like that,” Seymour said. “But, knock on wood, I don’t know that we’ve had any more dislocations, and it’s really not all that uncommon in basketball.”

ONE TIME Coeur d’Alene’s boys played Moscow in the Kibbie Dome. The Vikings were expected to win, but were down at halftime.

“So I’m pissed off, and I was pretty hard on them,” Coeur d’Alene coach Larry Bieber recalled. “We come all the way to play in this nice venue, and you’re not giving me effort,” he said to his team. “And the only things I ever expected out of you guys is to have effort and attitude.”

With that, he sent his team back out on the court.

“Everybody goes out, and the coaches go out. I stop to go to the bathroom, and when I came out, I turned the wrong way and started going down this hall, where they had other locker rooms. I actually got lost.

“Finally I figured out how to get back out there. By the time I got out there, they were just getting ready to start. Well, (Viking assistant coach John) Astorquia was laughing so hard he was crying.

“I said to myself, if I ever play in a place like that again I’m going to leave a trail of Skittles or something, so I can find my way back to the court,” Bieber said.

THESE DAYS, when a high school team goes on the road, a school adminstrator usually makes the trip as well, to be in charge in case something comes up.

Back in the day, the coach was often times in charge of everything.

“When you coached, you were in charge of the cheerleaders, because the advisor couldn’t go,” recalled Dave Fealko, girls basketball coach at Coeur d’Alene at the time. “And we got down there (to Lewiston) for a tournament game, I’m dealing with my team and getting ready to play Lewiston.”

Meanwhile, the Viking cheerleaders were putting up banners and signs in the gym before the game.

That’s when Fealko was approached by the legendary Dwight Church, then the athletic director at Lewiston.

“Fealko,” Church said in his gravelly voice, “them damn banners have to come down. There’s a District 1-2 policy, you can’t have banners.”

“I said ‘Dwight, I don’t care, I’ll tell ’em.’ So I had to tell the cheerleaders, since I was in charge of them, that they had to take the banners down.

“I think I went home and said, ‘Next time the cheerleaders go, send someone else, I don’t want to have to be in charge of what they’re doing, I have enough worries.’”

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.