No Fish, no frenzy, less fun

So now I’ve seen the riotous rivalry.

Stepped right into the middle of the season’s second Coeur d’Alene-Lake City basketball matchup, and even managed to get a good parking place.

In fact, I almost could have driven into the lobby.

My first thought: Where in the world WAS everybody?

The Lake City gym had so many empty seats Friday night that I wondered if I’d accidentally walked into the JV game.

Please, somebody explain: What is the deal with this?

I’m not kidding.

I don’t get it.

You have the two city schools facing off — the sort of setting where you expect to hear bands blaring, students with signs, kids in the parking lot, upper level seats filled to the edges — and here we had all the energy of a poetry reading.

ONE OF the players’ dads said he was surprised, too.

“You expect the place to be jammed for the ‘Fish Game,’ and not so much when the teams play a second time,” he said.

“But you really don’t think the atmosphere will feel like this.”

And hey, both games were a little wild at the end.

They were as dramatic as cross-city battles are supposed to be.

Lake City’s heavily favored girls were in serious danger of being upset before making some big free throws down the stretch to survive 43-37.

Meanwhile, the Viking boys — who had simply dismissed Lake City by 29 earlier in the season — were clinging to a single-bucket lead in the final minute before they managed to snatch a 55-51 win.

Yet the only real noise in the place, excluding the band, occurred when a couple dozen Lake City students showed up late in the boys game and finally caused a little bit of a ruckus.

That was it.

Maybe five minutes of racket — at two Coeur d’Alene-Lake City games.

THIS IS all about The Fish, obviously.

Or to use proper terminology, the “Fight for the Fish” game.

Both teams and their supporters go nuts, all bonkers over a wooden fish, and yet when the same teams play again — in league games that mean just as much — hardly anyone can be bothered.

OK, I understand The Fish is a gigantic deal.

Great.

But there’s still pride and school spirit that should be banging away for the second time around.

A few years back, when I was covering big-league baseball and traveling with the Kansas City Royals, there was a sensational saloon in Baltimore called No Fish Today.

There were blues bands, underground rockers, most of the young women in Maryland (at least when the ballplayers were there) and old-fashioned bartenders who knew your name and what you ordered — even if you only visited two or three times a year.

FOR YEARS, I kept a yellow, long-sleeved T-shirt from No Fish Today.

The shirts were so well-known everywhere that I wore mine in a charity softball game — as a teammate of singer Jimmy Buffett.

I looked all over for that shirt on Friday, thinking it would be funny to break the thing out at the non-Fish basketball gathering.

Couldn’t find the T-shirt, but also couldn’t find much zip at these games that would have made wearing it even humorous.

Look, after experiencing the library atmosphere of Friday night’s sleepwalk, I think Coeur d’Alene and Lake City need some kind of trophy for their second meeting.

Seriously, this was just way too quiet.

How about a Fight for the Ferret?

Surely we can come up with a stuffed ferret someplace.

Let’s get on that.

I know, it’s not The Fish.

But they need SOMETHING to put a firecracker under these second games.

You can’t just have a rivalry once a year.

Can you?

Steve’s sports columns for The Press appear on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He also contributes the “Zags Tracker” package on Gonzaga basketball each Tuesday.

Facebook: Steve Cameron

Twitter: @BrandNewDayCDA

Email: scameron@cdapress.com