THE FRONT ROW WITH MARK NELKE: Bulldogs re-creating the resurgence, all those years later

Editor's note: Story has been updated to note Jeremy Thielbahr and Ryan Knowles both graduated in 1997.

Y'all heard the cheers Friday night.

I remember the tears.

It was 1996, and the Sandpoint High football team had just lost a heartbreaker at home to the Post Falls Trojans, when a victory would have put the Bulldogs in the state playoffs for the first time in nine seasons.

Working at the Daily Bee in Sandpoint back then, I went into the locker room to get some thoughts from Sandpoint coach Satini Puailoa.

Often, the background noise in those situations is music ... or silence.

In this case, it was the sound of kids sobbing.

Puailoa had been brought in two years earlier to resurrect a program that had been down for several years. And in Year 3, the Bulldogs thought they were headed back to the playoffs, but fell inches short.

Hence, the tears.

Jeremy Thielbahr was on that team.

I remembered him as a fun-loving, hard-running tailback in a Sandpoint offense that gained chunks of yards on the ground.

He was a joy to be around — sort of like what a Doberman would be like if it were a human — and he always made sure to remind me how proud he was of his "hogs", the offensive linemen who made all those yards possible.

Thielbahr, of course, went on to play at Washington State, and then was a successful high school head coach at Eastside Catholic in Sammamish, Wash.

Ryan Knowles was also on that 1996 team.

And both were part of Puailoa's previous Sandpoint teams that set the foundation for what was to come.

Knowles went on to play defensive end at the University of Idaho, where in 1998 he started on a Vandals team that won the Humanitarian Bowl in Boise.

During his Bulldog days, I remember him being more of a quiet, calculated defensive standout.

(Except, of course, for the time he was running down the field covering a kickoff, and slammed into one of the blockers. The opponent's helmet came flying off, and Knowles picked up the helmet, held it aloft like a trophy and let out a primal scream.)

Anyway, after his U of I days, Knowles also embarked on a coaching career, capped by a 12-year stint as an assistant coach at Colgate.

Even in high school, he seemed like someone meant to be a future coach — which made sense since his father, John, was a longtime football coach in Sandpoint.

In 1997, the year after Thielbahr and Knowles graduated, Sandpoint capped the resurgence under Puailoa — the one Thielbahr and Knowles were part of creating — by winning the state title, 24-21 over Eagle on a freezing Friday night at Bronco Stadium in Boise.

MORE THAN two decades later, Sandpoint is blessed to have two of its favorite sons back in town, trying to lead the Bulldogs to their first state football title since then — Knowles in his fourth year as head coach, Thielbahr in his third season as offensive coordinator.

Both left seemingly pretty good situations to return home — Thielbahr's Eastside Catholic team was a perennial state title contender in Washington, and played the occasional "national" game on ESPN. Knowles coached in the Ivy League. Ryan's sister, Kelly, is Jeremy's sister-in-law.

But there they were on Friday night, coaching on an artificial turf field at Barlow Stadium that no one would have imagined would have been there more than two decades ago, 3 yards from a trip to the state title game.

With Sandpoint having answered Blackfoot's touchdown in overtime with a score of its own, Knowles made the call to roll the dice and go for two and the win — a call their aggressive and confident high school coach, Puailoa, likely would have made back in the day, with "Theo" in the backfield and Knowles in for the key play on the offensive line.

Back then, the call might have been toss left to Thielbahr, with Knowles paving the way for the hard-churning back.

Two decades later, offenses have changed, but the thought was the same. Thielbahr made the call — a keeper to the left by the quarterback out of the shotgun, with the option to pitch to pitch to the Bulldogs' current hard-running back.

The quarterback ran and read, a big hole opened up, and he knifed into the end zone — the same end zone where the Bulldogs came up just short all those years ago — for the winning points, and bedlam ensued.

And Knowles and Thielbahr were headed to the state title game as Bulldogs — the game they'd hoped to reach as players, but hopefully could look back with pride as being a part of the process that allowed future Bulldogs to reach that game.

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.