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THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: The league games that weren't — at least for the fall

| September 20, 2020 1:30 AM

Lake City's volleyball team was 2-0 in league midway through last week.

Now, the Timberwolves are 1-2 in league.

Post Falls went from 3-0 in league in volleyball back down to 2-0, and the Trojans have since returned to 3-0.

Lakeland was 1-1 in league in volleyball; the Hawks are now 2-0.

Sandpoint volleyball was 0-4 in league.

Now the Bulldogs are 0-1.

Coeur d'Alene's boys soccer team was once 4-0-1 in league.

The Vikings are now 2-0-2.

Lake City's boys soccer team dropped from 3-1-1 to 1-1-1.

Coeur d'Alene's girls soccer team still leads the league, but at 3-0-1, not 5-0-1.

Chalk it up to COVID-19, where nothing is a given, and the rules of today might not be the rules of tomorrow.

LAST FALL, the seven members of the Inland Empire League voted to combine the four 5A schools (Coeur d'Alene, Lake City, Post Falls and Lewiston) and the three 4A schools (Lakeland, Sandpoint and Moscow) into one big league for all team sports but football.

All the teams would play each other, and one league champion would be crowned. When the postseason rolled around, the 5As would go their way, the 4As their way.

One caveat — all games counted the same toward regional seeding — the 5A team with the best record in the combined IEL would be the top seed to regionals, and so on.

Same with 4As.

The theory was to have more games that "counted" — otherwise, the 5As would have just six games that "counted" in, say, volleyball and basketball, and the 4As would have just four that "counted."

Enter Moscow.

Or rather, re-enter Moscow.

When the Bears decided before the season, because of concerns over the coronavirus, to not play any other schools, and just have its athletes play on intramural teams within the school, that affected the schedules of the other six teams.

Many filled those openings with other schools.

So when Moscow changed course three weeks later and opted to return to interscholastic play, not all of the other schools — especially the 5A schools — had room on their remaining schedules to play the Bears twice. Some did, but some could only play Moscow once.

That meant Moscow wouldn't have played as many league games as Lakeland or Sandpoint. If the league had gone to winning percentage in league games to determine seeding to regionals, Moscow would have had a heckuva advantage over the other 4A schools, by not having played as many games against the (bigger) 5A schools.

So IEL officials met and decided, for the fall season only, they'd go back to the way it was in recent years — just 4A games vs. other 4A teams would count, and ditto for 5A vs. 5A.

The IEL plans to go back to the combined league standings for boys and girls basketball, as well as baseball and softball in the spring.

So that's why the league records changed in volleyball and soccer, right in the middle of the season. It's more of a double-take, wondering how a team went from, say, 4-0 to 2-0 in league.

The return of Moscow is why.

IN GENERAL, it doesn't really matter if you count all the games or not. The seedings for regionals would most likely remain the same.

So far this fall in volleyball, the 5As are 6-2 against the 4As — the 4A wins by Lakeland and Sandpoint, both over Lewiston.

In boys and girls soccer, it's 5-1 in favor of the 5As in both. The 4As' lone wins were Sandpoint's boys and girls beating Post Falls (Sandpoint's girls also beat Lake City in a game that didn't count in the league standings.

Now, none of those do.

Still, it might be interesting, late in the regular season in boys basketball, where a game between Lake City and Lakeland, or Post Falls and Moscow, has some bearing on home-court advantage in a 5A or 4A regional tournament game.

Hopefully, we'll see.

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.