HOW THEY WERE BUILT — COEUR d’ALENE HIGH SOFTBALL: Vikings ‘Circle’ the wagons, and state titles followed

In 1998, the Coeur d’Alene Vikings lost their opening game at the state A-1 softball tournament.

The Vikings fell 2-1 to Twin Falls at Big Valley Municipal Park in Rupert.

Katelyn Tatum made sure the Vikings never lost again that weekend.

When Coeur d’Alene got back to the motel after that Thursday afternoon loss, Tatum approached her coach, Larry Bieber.

“Coach, I got this,” she told Bieber.

As a freshman in 1995, Tatum hit the first home run at Larry Schwenke Field, Bieber recalled, in the Vikings’ first season playing their home games on campus after previously playing downtown at McEuen Field.

Now a senior, Tatum was a team leader with the 1998 squad.

She called for Viking Circle — for players only, no coaches, where the leader of the team would gather the players in a circle and talk about whatever issue arose.

According to Bieber, Tatum’s message to her teammates was simple.

“We better ... win the rest of these — this is my senior season,” she said in Viking Circle.

Her teammates listened.

Coeur d’Alene won six straight games over the next two days, all in the losers bracket, including two straight over Centennial in the championship round, to claim the Vikings’ first state title in fastpitch softball.

Coeur d’Alene repeated as state champions the following season, then went back-to-back again in 2006 and ’07. The Vikings’ most recent state title was their fifth, in 2012, all under Bieber, who took over as Vikings coach in 1994, after Larry Schwenke — he of Larry Schwenke Field — coached Coeur d’Alene to 12 straight state slowpitch softball championships from 1982-93.

Under Bieber, who coached Coeur d’Alene through the 2015 season, the Vikings also finished second at state eight times. He often joked about being tired of having to give the second-place speech, given to the assembled crowd by the coach of the runner-up team at state.

“So I could have 13 state titles if I’d been any kind of coach,” he said with a laugh.

THEN A sophomore, Blake Hoorelbeke pitched nearly every inning for the Vikings on that long weekend. She’s still in the record books for most innings pitched in a tournament (46 2/3) appearances (7) and wins (6), all set in 1998, and ERA (0.25, in 1999 and 2000).

She pitched Coeur d’Alene to the 1999 title, and nearly led the Vikings to a three-peat before suffering a toe injury in 2000, when Coeur d’Alene finished second.

Back to 1998.

During that long comeback through the losers bracket, Bieber said he thought about possibly resting Hoorelbeke for a game or two, knowing he would need her to be as fresh as possible by the time the Vikings made it back into the championship round.

Before one of those games on Friday, or early on Saturday, Bieber said he told Hoorelbeke he was going to let someone else pitch that game.

“Coach, I’m the pitcher, and I’m the best hitter,” she told Bieber.

“Yeah, but I want you to rest,” Bieber replied.

“Coach, I don’t need the rest,” Hoorelbeke countered.

“OK, you’re on,” Bieber said.

A FEW years later, Coeur d’Alene was back on top, winning state titles in 2006 and ’07 led by Jenna DeLong, another standout pitcher who could also hit a little bit, too.

“Oh my gosh, now there’s a girl that knew how to lead a team,” Bieber said of DeLong. “In those years, we were having troubles with some of those younger kids, because they had so much success in travel ball ... ”

They thought that success would immediately translate to high school ball, Bieber explained.

“Jenna just grabbed those kids, took them into Viking Circle, and they came out like little puppies,” he recalled. “She’s probably one of my most favorite players that I’ve ever coached.”

Bieber recalled one game, coaching third base, where he waved a girl around third and she got thrown out at home by a good 10 feet.”

DeLong was with the rest of the Viking players in the dugout, which was on the third-base side.

“Bieb, come here,” DeLong said to her coach, after the play.

“What’s up?” he replied.

“You know, Bieb, you’re at about 75 percent. You gotta pick it up,” she said.

“That made me think, ‘You know what, I’m not at 100 percent right now,’” he thought.

“She was the coach,” Bieber said recently. “I was just writing the lineups.”

BIEBER RUED the near-misses — under him, Coeur d’Alene finished second at state in 2000, ’02, ’03, ’04, ’05, ’09, ’14 and ’15.

In 2012, the Vikings advanced to the championship game against Lake City, which had won the state title in 2011 and, led by Casey Stangel, was poised to win again in 2012 and ’13.

In 2012, in a P.C. effort to reduce missed class time, the Idaho High School Activities Association had shortened the state softball tournament from a true double-elimination format to single-elimination with a consolation bracket.

Never mind that, by then, the state softball tourney, even with a double-elimination format, had been condensed to two days.

But anyway, when Coeur d’Alene advanced to meet Lake City in the third game of the tournament, it was the championship game. Under the old format, the winner of that game would have advanced to the title game, and the loser could have come back through the losers bracket, where they would have had to beat the winner twice in the championship round.

“I don’t know if we could have beat ’em twice,” Bieber said.

We’ll never know. Coeur d’Alene didn’t have to.

The Vikings jumped on Stangel for three runs in the third inning and, with Lindsie Scholwinski in the circle, won 5-2 for the most unlikely of Coeur d’Alene’s five state fastpitch titles.

“To this day, that would have to be the No. 1 softball (title), because we were such underdogs. Complete, total underdogs,” Bieber said.

Heading into that title game, Coeur d’Alene had lost 10 straight to Lake City, over the past two seasons. So what made the Vikings confident that they could win this time?

“It was only going to be one game, and that they (the Timberwolves) were over-confident,” Bieber said. “And we weren’t a bad team. We had really good pitching, and I had kids that could hit the ball, and we ran ... we’d manufacture runs with our short game. Once we got ahead of ’em, they just started pressing.”

BIEBER PLAYED fastpitch at Portland Community College while he was getting his master’s degree, and he also played fastpitch while in the Army in Germany.

He stepped down as Coeur d’Alene softball coach in 2015, with an record of 466-152 in 21 fastpitch seasons, 19 trips to state and 15 state trophies. In 1994 he coached the Vikings’ last slowpitch team, going 19-7 and guiding Coeur d’Alene to its 13th straight state slowpitch crown.

He was also the Vikings boys basketball coach for nine seasons during that stretch, winning a state title in 1998 — just two months before he won his first state fastpitch title.

When he retired from teaching in 2003, he was told he could only be head coach of one varsity sport.

“I said I’d rather do softball, because it’s way less pressure,” Bieber said.

Unless, of course, you’re not at 100 percent on a particular day, and you have to hear about it from the leader of your team.