Sandpoint football renews rivalry with Coeur d'Alene

SANDPOINT — It’s a bitter feud that has been missing for almost a decade.

Once a thing of legend, the heated rivalry between Sandpoint and Coeur d’Alene on the football field has been nonexistent the last eight years. But thanks in part to COVID-19, the North Idaho foes will get to renew their rivalry tonight when the Bulldogs travel to Coeur d’Alene.

Head coach Ryan Knowles, a 1997 SHS grad, said he always looked forward to playing the Vikings when he was in high school and can’t wait for Friday night’s matchup.

“They are the team to beat in the north until somebody else does it, so I’m very happy to get them back on the schedule,” he said.

Prior to the coronavirus shaking up the Bulldogs’ schedule, Sandpoint wasn’t going to play Coeur d’Alene in 2020. Now the Bulldogs get a chance to knock off one of the top programs in the state. Vikings head coach Shawn Amos has built a program that Knowles admires and hopes to duplicate in Sandpoint.

“I look forward to this game,” Knowles said. “I think it’s a perfect opportunity for us to see where we’re at, see the gains we’ve made as a program and some of the areas we need to get better at.”

Coeur d’Alene has advanced to the 5A state championship game six of the last nine years, including last fall when the Vikings fell 57-56 to Rigby in overtime.

The Vikings return their quarterback Jack Prka, running backs Trent Elstad and Gunner Guilio and linebacker Luke McLaughlin, the 2019 5A IEL Defensive Player of the Year. And that’s just a few of the star returners.

Knowles said it will be a tall task but he is confident his team has a chance to dethrone the 5A power Friday night and hand them a season-opening loss.

In last week’s season opener for the Bulldogs, Sandpoint went toe-to-toe with Post Falls for three quarters. Unfortunately, the wheels fell off in the final 10 minutes and the Bulldogs lost 35-14 thanks to five turnovers, which marred the Bulldogs’ chances of topping the Trojans last Friday night.

Take those mistakes away and Sandpoint was a score away from knotting the game up and potentially grabbing a victory.

“What ended up happening was we didn’t take care of the football,” Knowles said. “We got some short fields and it turned into a 35-14 game which doesn’t look like a very competitive football game, but it absolutely was.”

Penalties also wiped out several big plays for the Bulldogs, including a 72-yard scramble by quarterback Gerrit Cox.

Knowles said he’s glad he took some time to break down the film because there were a lot of positives that weren’t evident in the stat sheet, including the Bulldog defense making Post Falls earn every yard they got when they weren’t presented with a short field due to turnovers.

“There’s a lot to work off of there,” he said.

Knowles, a fan of analytics, said it's rare to win a football game when you lose the turnover battle as badly as the Bulldogs did last week.

“You don’t win those games, you flat out don’t,” he said. “If we go even in the turnover margin, that’s a totally different ballgame. It’s just really frustrating because we really harp on ball security here.”

Restrictions in place due to COVID-19 also prevented the team from congregating in their own locker room last Friday. Instead, before, during and after the game, the Bulldogs propped open some camping chairs on the grass behind Barlow Stadium and gathered around in a socially-distanced circle to listen to the coaches talk.

It looked more like a camping trip. All that was missing were s’mores, some tents and a campfire.

It was certainly an odd experience that Sandpoint will be faced with all season due to the times we are living in. Did it impact how the Bulldogs played? That’s hard to know, but it certainly threw a wrench in their normal pregame routine.

“You know that’s something that I probably underplay because I don’t think that should be a factor at all,” Knowles said about being restricted from the locker room. “We should be able to walk to the stadium and play a football game on dirt, that’s the way I want this team to play regardless of the circumstances, but sometimes I have to take a step back and say you know we don’t have that pregame to ourselves moment and we got to try and reproduce that as much as possible.”

However, those challenges test the Bulldogs’ discipline, which was a theme in practice all week, Knowles said.

Cox, an all-league running back in 2019, got the start at quarterback for the Bulldogs in Week 1. He scored Sandpoint’s only touchdown on offense — an 18-yard scramble in the first quarter — and accounted for 146 total yards. He also threw two interceptions.

Junior Auggie Lehman and sophomore Parker Pettit have also been in the mix for the starting quarterback spot.

The quarterback is arguably the most important player on the field and all that attention comes with a lot of scrutiny, Knowles said. But at the end of the day, there is competition all over the field for the Bulldogs and the coaches take everything into account, Knowles said.

“We make those decisions daily,” he said. “The whole process is ongoing. You know a good day in practice could be the difference right now between where these three [quarterbacks] are. It’s a matter of looking at the best 11 and who is making the good decisions, and as time goes on health … because I would be lying if I didn’t say there were a couple ailments in that group that are affecting the decision as well.”

Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. tonight at Viking Stadium. You can listen to the game on AM 1400 KSPT or ROCK 103. The game will also be livestreamed on Sportscope. The cost to watch is $5 per game.