THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Hartz's triumphant return, with a little help from his friends

John Hartz last coached at Timberlake more than 17 years ago.

At age 50, he has spent roughly 6 percent of his life in North Idaho.

But it was the connections he made during his three years in Spirit Lake that paid dividends when Hartz brought his Eagle High football team north to play Coeur d'Alene in the state 5A quarterfinals last week.

Hartz was boys basketball coach at Timberlake for three seasons (2001-04), posting a record of 32-33. He was also an assistant football coach for the Tigers while in Spirit Lake, when Tim Kiefer (now the Lakeland coach) was the Timberlake head football coach.

Two of Hartz's former players were Jordan Redman and Jimmy Hoffman.

Hoffman is now a vice principal at Lakeland High.

"Ol Jimmy took care of us and got us into Lakeland today to help us have a place to stay," Hartz said Friday night, after Eagle had beaten Coeur d'Alene 23-14 to advance to the semifinals Friday at home vs. Highland at Pocatello. "We stayed the night here (Thursday) night at the Best Western, and we did some team-building stuff at Lakeland High."

Redman, in the insurance and real estate business, helped coordinate Eagle's stay at the Best Western Plus Coeur d'Alene Inn, and was there on gameday morning to help feed breakfast to the Mustangs' team and travel party.

"So my old Timberlake connections here were taking care of me," Hartz said. "I’ve stayed in touch with a few of those boys since, they’ve been awesome through the years.

"It’s all them being great people."

Hartz is in his third season as Eagle's head coach. Before that, he was a varsity assistant with the Mustangs since 2014, when Paul Peterson was head coach. Hartz took over as head coach in 2019 when Peterson retired after 14 years in the program, including a state title in 2009 after Eagle won in the snow at Coeur d'Alene one week earlier in a semifinal game.

BORN IN Twin Falls, Hartz and his family moved to Pocatello at age 5, then to Boise at age 14 when he was in the ninth grade. He graduated from Capital High in Boise in 1989.

His coaching career began at American Falls High in 1995. He was at Mountain Home for five years, the last three as head boys basketball coach.

While at Mountain Home, Hartz coached with a couple of guys who hailed from Wallace — one of whom was Bruce Bailey, a former coach and athletic director at Wallace High, and now a teacher there.

The other guy, John Roletto, invited Hartz to join him and some friends for a week in the Silver Valley in 2001.

Since his friends were going to be working during the day, Hartz was looking for something to do during the day while in North Idaho.

He called Hugh Watson, then the men's basketball coach at North Idaho College, and asked if there was anything he could help with.

As it turned out, Watson was putting on a basketball camp that week, and invited Hartz to help.

Around that time, Timberlake was looking for a boys basketball coach, and asked Watson if he had anyone to recommend.

"Timberlake called me, and I hadn’t applied for anything," Hartz recalled earlier this week. "Next thing you know, I was teaching and coaching up North, and I hadn’t really planned on moving up North, because I’d always been from the Boise area.

"Timberlake turned out to be one of the best runs of my career. I just loved it. I lived at Twin Lakes Village, played golf a ton, coached basketball and a little football, and met some great people."

Hartz said he was "kinda looking toward leaving Mountain Home for a couple reasons," but "I wasn’t coming up here to apply for jobs, that’s for sure," he said of his summer trip to North Idaho in 2001.

He said he fell in love with the area in North Idaho. Back then, Timberlake High was just three years removed from a split with Lakeland High when Hartz took over as basketball coach.

"I can remember when we beat Lakeland at one point my second year (in basketball)," Hartz recalled. "We had a good team so it didn’t surprise me a whole bunch, but I remember ... it was bigger to other people than it was to me, probably, it was because the school was so new."

The next year, Hartz and Timberlake beat Lakeland for the first time in basketball.

"The kids at Timberlake were awesome," he recalled. "There was a group in the boys basketball program that wanted Timberlake to take the next step … and I liked just having my own condo at Twin Lakes.

"It almost felt like living in the forest. I loved how the football field was almost like cut into pine trees … it’s like they just cut out 100 yards of pine trees and said 'This is where our football field is going to be.'"

BUT IN 2004, the pull of family brought Hartz back to the Treasure Valley.

He landed at Vallivue High in Caldwell, where he was an assistant boys basketball coach for four seasons, and part of a state championship team in 2006 when Will Bogan, a future Division I player, led the Falcons to a win over Coeur d'Alene in the state title game.

In 2008, Hartz moved on to Eagle, where he coached some sub-varsity basketball, and golf. In 2011 he coached football there at the sub-varsity level, then joined the varsity staff in 2014, working his way up to offensive coordinator and, in '19, to head coach.

Last week, in addition to Redman helping his old coach with hotel accommodations, then bringing in the griddles and helping feed the team breakfast, there was Hoffman, offering his school as a landing spot for the team for a few hours on Friday after it had checked out of the hotel.

In between all that, there was Post Falls coach Blaine Bennett, who was briefly on staff at Eagle a few years ago, offering his football field to Hartz for the Mustangs' walk-through on Friday morning.

"Those guys took care of us, man, it was very nice having a few connections, that’s for sure," Hartz said. "I knew there’s a reason I went there (to Timberlake) for those three years."

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @CdAPressSports.