THE FRONT ROW with JASON ELLIOTT: Should get good once the games get going

It’s fixing to get a lot crazier during the week in the coming weeks and months. 

We’ll soon be finding out just who the teams to beat are going to be in prep football, volleyball, soccer, swimming, cross country ...

Basically, if they’re playing, we’re going to know quickly this year.

Same goes for North Idaho College, which almost put both its soccer programs into the four-team Region 18 tournament in the first time back in the NJCAA last fall. 

AS IT appears at a quick glance of guidelines posted by the Idaho High School Activities Association, 6A schools Coeur d’Alene and Lake City weren’t given any favors when it comes to the road to state in boys and girls soccer this year. 

This year is the second year that the Timberwolves and Vikings will compete in a best-of-3 district championship series, with the champion having to win a play-in game in Lewiston to advance to state.

A play-in? 

If it's a numbers thing, I understand to a point. A two-team league should earn a way to state.

But punishing them because the numbers didn't quite add up for a few other programs just seems wrong. 

Both Lake City and Coeur d'Alene are typically in the trophy mix, with Lake City winning state girls titles in 2012, 2016 and 2021. Those championships in 2012 and 2016 were won at Coeur d’Alene High when the tournament was held in the north. 

Coeur d’Alene won the girls title in 2006 at the Capital Soccer Complex in Boise. 

Coeur d’Alene’s boys advanced to the title match in 2016, also at Coeur d'Alene High. 

This year's state boys tournament will be held at Eagle High, with the girls playing at Rocky Mountain High in Meridian. 

Coeur d’Alene beefed up its boys and girls soccer schedules with nonleague games at Owyhee and Timberline this year. 

We'll see how much that helps or maybe hurts them in the long run this year, whoever is lucky enough to get through regionals.

Meanwhile in 5A, which includes Post Falls (a 6A school playing down a division in soccer for the second straight season) with Lakeland, Sandpoint, Lewiston and Moscow, the district champ advances to state but the runner-up will have a shot at a play-in as well, with the boys match in Lewiston and girls having to travel to McCall-Donnelly High. 

State tournaments this year are in the Boise area, with the 5A boys tournament at Columbia High in Nampa and the girls at Middleton High. 

MEANWHILE, the Coeur d’Alene boys cross country team will attempt to win a third straight state championship this fall. 

Trips to the Woodbridge Classic in California in September and the Nike Hole in the Wall Invitational in Lakewood, Wash., in October will be big tests to see just where the Vikings are when the postseason comes. 

Sure, the Vikings lost Max Cervi-Skinner and Zack Cervi-Skinner — both now at Wake Forest — to graduation and will have to go about winning a third one a different way. 

But they were also young on the boys roster last year and cross country is the rare sport where your youth may not be such a bad thing. 

The Viking girls claimed titles in 2012, 2013 and 2014 with a group of runners that were young once, and just got better and better. 

As luck might have it, this year’s state meet is Nov. 1 at Lewiston Orchards. 

The last time the meet was there, the north had three state champions — Annastasia Peters of Post Falls (5A girls), McKenna Kozeluh of Coeur d’Alene Charter (3A girls) and Jacob Barnhardt of Timberlake (3A boys). 

Peters is now a junior at Utah and Kozeluh a junior at Idaho, with both competing in cross country and track and field. 

Barnhardt is in his sophomore year at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, where he competed on the Lopes' triathlon team as a freshman. 

So, who’s going to be the next big sports story in the area? 

We’ll find out soon enough now, won’t we. 

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for The Press. He can be reached by telephone at 208-664-8176, Ext. 1206 or via email at jelliott@cdapress.com. Follow him on ‘X’, previously Twitter @JECdAPress.