Plenty to unwrap with prep sports

Recently, there’d been a few gifts still left to be opened under the tree when it came to prep holiday basketball tournaments.

Fans just need to remain patient a few more days.

BASKETBALL FANS will have to wait another week before the next installment of the Lake City Holiday Invitational, moved this year to Jan. 2-4.

With teams unable to travel on Wednesday due to Christmas, they’ll do it on New Year’s Day instead this year.

Teams like Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene won’t have much travel for three games. Same with Mead and North Central of Spokane.

Columbia River of Vancouver, Wash., will return once again after going 2-1 in the 2018 tournament. The team’s lone loss was 58-54 to Post Falls to open the tournament.

Heritage High, also of Vancouver, is coached by Brian Childs, the former Coeur d’Alene Charter head boys basketball coach and former Lake City assistant coach.

Childs went 92-65 in seven seasons as coach of the Panthers, guiding the program to a third-place finish in the 2007 state 1A tournament. Coeur d’Alene Charter has not fielded a basketball team since 2017.

Heritage faces Coeur d’Alene on Jan. 2 at 3:30, then faces North Central (Friday) and Mead (Saturday) to conclude the tournament.

LOOKING AT the Timberlake girls basketball record — which is 6-4 headed into today’s game at Moscow — it might seem like a down year for the 3A Tigers.

But five of those games have been against three of the four teams in the 5A Inland Empire League, with Timberlake going 3-2 and the two losses by a single point.

In wins this week, Timberlake held 5A Coeur d’Alene to 39 points and 4A Lakeland to 28.

“We’re starting to put longer stretches together of better basketball,” Timberlake coach Matt Miller said. “Earlier this year, we’d been having some long lulls during games. Now, those lulls are starting to get shorter. The girls are progressing really well. We’re getting better each day and they’re working hard in practice. Hopefully we can continue on that path.”

WHILE IT remains a long way from the state high school wrestling tournament, don’t be shocked if the contenders are more clear after today.

At first glance of the team standings at the 49th Tri-State Invitational on Friday afternoon, Post Falls was leading with 91 points, followed by Moses Lake with 76.

Timberlake High of Spirit Lake, which had a good start out of a handful of wrestlers, was tied for fourth with Chiawana High of Pasco with 64 points.

If you consider yourself a fan of high school wrestling, there’s two things to take away from this.

It’s early, and a lot of things can happen still.

And stay patient, it’s only going to change again.

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 [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JECdAPress.