THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: COVID helped bring Reese Strawn to North Idaho, where he recently completed a record-setting basketball career at Lake City High

Lake City High senior Reese Strawn was vacationing with a family friend at Priest Lake in the spring of 2020, prior to his eighth grade year, when he got the call that would change the direction of his basketball career. 

The call came from Corey Symons, the North Idaho College men’s basketball coach. Symons was coaching an AAU boys basketball team his son Caden was playing on, and he needed another player for an upcoming tournament. 

Corey worked his connections and got ahold of Reese, who was living in Camas, Wash., at the time.  

“I was just dying to play, so I said ‘Of course,’” Strawn recalled. “I was super lucky. I only had an hour and a half drive to Coeur d’Alene (from Priest Lake), instead of a 6-and-a-half-hour drive (from Camas)." 

One of the other players on the AAU team he joined for that tournament was Cason Miller, also a rising eighth grader, who would eventually attend Lake City.  

COVID-19 had shut down high school sports everywhere that spring. That next school year, Washington offered high school sports on a limited basis, while Idaho offered more of a normal high school sports experience beginning that fall. 

“During COVID in Washington I really couldn’t play basketball, and I was itching to play,” said Strawn, who was born in nearby Vancouver, Wash., and lived in Camas up to that point. 

Strawn played with Corey Symons’ team in that AAU tournament, one thing led to another, and late that summer, Strawn and his family moved to Coeur d’Alene, where Reese spent a year at Woodland Middle School before enrolling at Lake City, in part due to the friendship he had developed with Miller. 

“For some reason I clicked with Cason and his family,” Strawn said. “For some reason we just had this feeling this is where we were supposed to be.” 

Strawn, a 6-foot-2 point guard, recently completed a record-setting career at Lake City, playing two largely different roles. 

His first two years, he was a role player and occasional starter on a loaded team that, in 2022-23 rolled to an undefeated season and brought home Lake City’s first state title in boys basketball with one of the best teams in Idaho history. 

The last two seasons, with most of those guys graduated, Strawn (and Miller) led a largely new group to a pair of trophies at state — a consolation title in 2024, and a state championship game appearance this past March. 

And recently, Strawn signed a letter of intent to play basketball at NCAA Division II Western Colorado University in Gunnison, Colo. 

“Watching him as a freshman he had a little different role with that group, and he shined in it,” said James Anderson, who has been the Lake City boys head coach the past two seasons, after coaching the Timberwolf girls for six seasons. “But I always knew for sure there was a lot more untapped in there, once he had a little more freedom, from change of role to the graduation of the seniors. I thought there was a pretty good chance he could be pretty dynamic.”

PART OF the reason Strawn opted to go to Lake City, he said, was also to practice against future Division I point guard Kolton Mitchell, who is now a redshirt sophomore at Idaho, and how much better that experience would make him. 

“He’s one of the most competitive people I’ve ever met,” Strawn says now. “He’s a real pest.” 

Strawn started the first few games of his freshman season on a team with four future Division I players — three in basketball. 

“In my head I was fully confident, but looking back, I don’t think I was fully ready for it, physically,” Strawn recalled. “I wasn’t strong enough, I wasn’t quick enough. So I lost my starting job. I fell down the ladder a little bit — seventh, eighth man — but I figured it out toward the end of the year.” 

The next year, Mitchell had to serve a one-game suspension and missed the season opener, so Strawn, as a sophomore, started at point guard. 

As it turned out, that opener was against Union High of Camas. Had Strawn stayed in Washington, he would have played at Camas High, whose crosstown rival was ... Union High. 

“When I got to start that game, I was pretty amped about it, so ready and so excited,” said Strawn, who finished with five 3-pointers, 19 points, seven assists, three rebounds and two steals as Lake City rolled to a 61-39 victory at The Fitz tournament at Lewis and Clark High in Spokane. 

The rest of the season, Strawn was a key reserve on that eventual state title team, recalling because of the expectations, “every game was a ton of pressure, but that was also what made it a ton of fun.” 

With most of that team moved on, few on the outside expected much of Lake City in 2023-24, Strawn’s junior year. 

However, that wasn’t the case on the inside. 

“My whole life, other than those two high school seasons, I’ve been the guy, so, I was more ready to prove everyone wrong with the new group,” Strawn said, “and show people yeah, we probably lost the greatest team in Idaho history, but I’m still here and we’re still going to be competitive. 

“There was very much an attitude in the town that we were done now, and we did not want that to be a thing,” he added. “Inside the Lake City doors, that was not the attitude at all.” 

That year, Strawn led Lake City back to state where, after falling in the first round to Coeur d’Alene, the T-Wolves won their next two games to bring home a trophy. 

“As a junior he felt like he had to shoot when we went into funks," Anderson said. “He felt like he had to be the guy, and as he grew more and more confident in our system and his teammates, he knew he didn’t always have to be the guy, that we were better off playing as a team, and he was all-in on that.” 

His senior year was even better, Lake City winning the 6A District 1 title and advancing to the state title game, where the T-Wolves ran into the juggernaut that is Owyhee High of Meridian, which rolled to its third state title in four seasons. 

Two trophies from state in what many thought was a rebuilding phase at Lake City ... 

“It was a good feeling, especially this last year,” Strawn said. “Obviously it didn’t end how we wanted it too, we had a bad game and they had a great game in the state championship, but ... if you would have asked 90 percent of the people in this town after my sophomore year when all those guys graduated, 'Do you think we’d be in the state championship a year from now?’, no one would say yes. I would have said yes. 

“That was a really good feeling to know that I did make an impact. I’ll remember it forever.” 

Under Anderson, much of Lake City’s offense involves screening — a different offensive strategy compared the Strawn’s first two seasons at Lake City. 

“His junior year we got a lot of blitz (double-team) coverage," Anderson recalled. “And at first I was a little leery of that, and by Year 2, I would just go into games and hope and pray that teams were going to blitz Reese, because his teammates had gotten so comfortable with him. You put two guys on Reese, as good as he is as a shooter and everything else, he’s a better passer. And it made life really easy for us when people would blitz or hedge or double-team the ball screens.” 

The “blitzing” eventually subsided in Year 2 under Anderson. 

STRAWN FINISHED his Lake City career with 1,304 points, second in school history (behind Mitchell’s 1,614). His 522 points this season were a school record (eclipsing Matt Dlouhy’s 497).  

Strawn broke Mitchell’s single-season assist record (136) last year with 140, then pushed the record out further with 157 this year (Miller, who recently committed to North Idaho College, had 144 assists this year). Strawn’s 355 career assists are a school record. 

Strawn’s 96 3-pointers made as a junior broke JJ Winger’s single-season record of 65 (teammate Braydn Arrieta hit 69 3s in 2023-24). Strawn hit 90 3s this past season (on 41% shooting), and his 234 career 3s are a school record. 

Strawn was nominated for this year’s McDonald’s All-American Game. 

Reese’s mom, the former Christie Roes, played volleyball at Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake, then played for Tom Hilbert at Idaho. 

His dad, Dean, was a three-sport athlete in Concord, Calif., and later coached basketball. 

STILL, AFTER all that basketball success, Strawn said he was ready to call it good after high school, go to Boise State, be a “regular kid” and study to be either a lawyer or a sports agent. 

He was hoping to sign with a Division II school, but with the current recruiting climate, high school kids often wait while colleges first restock their rosters with transfers. 

Strawn said he had some offers from Division III schools (who don’t offer athletic scholarships), and from some junior colleges. 

Strawn and Anderson had been in contact with Western Colorado, coached by former Idaho head man Zac Claus, for more than a year. 

Strawn had set a deadline of May 15 — no offer from a D-II, no basketball.  

“I was in a state of mind where I didn’t need to play,” Strawn said. “I was content with being done, but I obviously wanted to play.” 

Eventually, Claus offered Strawn a full-ride scholarship in early April, and Strawn committed a week later. 

Much to the delight of Anderson, who played three seasons at Western Colorado, after one year at Otero Junior College in La Junta, Colo.  

“He's good enough he could play on that team right away,” Anderson said. 

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 1205, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports. 

    JASON DUCHOW PHOTOGRAPHY Reese Strawn of Lake City set single-season school records for points, assists and 3-pointers, and career records in assists and 3s.