THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: John Knowles: Coach, dad, right-hand man, friend

Maybe you remember John Knowles as a longtime assistant football coach at Sandpoint High School. 

Or maybe you remember him as a coaching buddy, and friend. 

Or perhaps as a mentor of sorts. 

Or the guy that built houses, taught vocational carpentry, and even built his own houseboat. 

Or maybe, you remember him as your father, coach and friend. 

“He was what you want a dad to be, in my estimation. I can’t imagine a better dad,” said his son, Ryan, the current football coach at Sandpoint High. 

Or maybe most of the above. 

“John and I spent a lot of time together — at practice, outside of practice, working on his houseboat, and being friends, and hanging out,” said Mike McNulty, another longtime football coach at Sandpoint High. “When I first started going to football practice in the early '80s, John and I just hit it off ... he was coaching the defensive front, and I was coaching the offensive front, and we spent a lot of time at clinics, and at practice. And we just kinda bonded over the idea of being on a staff, and working with the O-line and D-line.” 

In 1994, Satini Puailoa came to Sandpoint after coaching at San Marcos High in Santa Barbara, Calif., and immediately changed the fortunes of Bulldog football. 

But he did it with a lot of behind-the-scenes help from John Knowles. 

“John was my guide through all the land mines that were North Idaho football,” Puailoa said.  

John Knowles, a four-sport athlete and 1966 graduate of Sandpoint High, who played defensive end for one season at Boise Junior College and three seasons at Idaho, coached one season at Wallace (where he met his wife, Janice) before returning to Sandpoint for a coaching stint that stretched off and on for more than four decades, died on Nov. 30. He was 76. 

A celebration of life is scheduled for Saturday at noon at Sandpoint Middle School. 

JOHN KNOWLES was tough, but beloved. 

Players saw the bark, but also gravitated to him. 

“He was always hardest on me,” said Ryan, a star defensive end for the Bulldogs, who played for his dad in high school, then played at the University of Idaho before embarking on a coaching career which included 12 seasons at Colgate, before returning home to take over the Sandpoint High football program in 2018. “He didn’t want anybody to think he was the reason for anything I did. He wanted to make sure I earned it.” 

Then there was the day John Knowles kicked one of the members of his defensive front off the practice field. 

It was his son. 

“The rest of the defensive front was jaw on the ground, trying to figure out what was going to happen here,” Ryan recalled. “We were doing a drill and he kept turning it up, just a little drill where he was throwing the ball. I was getting frustrated with how hard he was throwing the ball at me and I threw it back to him hard, put a little zing on it. ...  

“Get out of here,” John barked. 

“I thought I was getting moved to offense that day,” Ryan said. 

However ... 

“In true “Big Daddy” form, he used it as a coachable moment at dinner that night, and we all got through it,” Ryan said. “It was one of those we all get a chuckle about still.” 

John Knowles coached the defensive front for a couple of seasons when Ryan was head coach at Sandpoint, before taking time out to build houses — for Ryan and his wife, Megan; for himself and Janice. 

“I loved football because of him and what he did, and wanted to be like him,” Ryan said. “He absolutely rubbed off on me, with his demeanor, and always his wisdom. He wanted to give. He always wanted to coach, and develop.” 

IF JOHN Knowles was the Batman on the Sandpoint High football coaching staff, Mike McNulty was the Robin. 

See one, and you usually saw the other. 

And not just on the football field. 

“John and I spent an inordinate amount of time working on his houseboat,” McNulty recalled.  

As the story goes, John found some pontoons out in the Hope area one day, and said he was going to build a houseboat. 

McNulty said he would help.  

“We used to put cribbings under the houseboat (called “The Big Daddy,” after John’s nickname) when the lake went down,” McNulty recalled. “And we would be out there, the two of us, in the water, in the cold, trying to push 4x4s and 4x8s underneath and make a crib, so as the water went down it could settle on the bottom. Some afternoons we’d be out there, and be looking at each other going, 'What the hell are we doing?’ And we’d start laughing, and we’d have to stop for a while and go warm up,” 

As the adage goes, the best coaches are also the best teachers. 

“The way he related to people; he could talk to you, bring things right down to your level.” McNulty said. “He’d been there, he had all that experience. When he was teaching the vocational carpentry class, I can’t believe how many kids I saw later, that worked for other companies that he started in the construction trade.” 

John was one of the many who played a big role in Project '92, the fieldhouse on the Sandpoint High campus built some three decades ago. 

"Greg Taylor was the impetus in that, and John dedicated himself to seeing it through,” McNulty said.  

“WE’VE GOT to go to camp.” 

John Knowles told that to Satini Puailoa in the spring of 1994, shortly after Puailoa had come up from Southern California to take over the Sandpoint High football program. 

“What’s camp?” Puailoa asked John. 

“Well, we go to a football camp, and it’s going to cost us $220 a kid,” John said.

“I go, 'We don’t have any money, and we’ve got to go to this camp?” 

In SoCal, there was no “camp.” There was a summer P.E. class where you could work with your own players, but not line up against anybody else. 

The year before, Puailoa was told, Sandpoint sent all of nine players to football camp. They were mixed in with other kids on a renegade team, coached by other coaches. 

“So I’m trying to grasp this camp thing,” Puailoa said. “And that first year we took, by phone calls and everything else, with John and Mike (McNulty), we recruited 30 kids to go. The next year we took 55, the next year we took 75, and then every year after that we took 100.  

“And if John wasn’t there ... " 

LATER THAT summer, Puailoa told John that they need to get the players into the weightroom. 

“Coach, we’ve got haying,” John told him. 

“What the hell’s haying?" Puailoa asked.

“The kids don’t come to the weightroom; they’ve got to go haying. That’s how they make money,” John explained. 

“No, we’ve got to get them into the weightroom.” Puailoa said. 

Eventually, Puailoa and Knowles and the other coaches were able to strike a balance with the players, where they could hay AND lift during the summer. 

“If John wasn’t there, to guide me through it ..." Puailoa said. 

THEN ONE year, a defensive player came up to Puailoa. 

“Coach, I’ll play, but come October, I have to go to elk camp for two weeks,” the player told him. 

“And so I go to John ... ‘John, what the hell is elk camp?’” 

“I don’t know ... I’m a Southern California beach guy,” Puailoa said. 

“John says 'Coach, you've got to remember, some of these guys have to put meat on the table, and elk hunting is bigger than football up here.’ And he’s walking me through all this stuff.  

“So I go to the guy .. ‘Hey, when you come back, you’ve still got a spot here. And bring us something.’” Puailoa said. 

Eventually, Puailoa and Knowles and the other coaches were able to strike a balance — kids would play Friday night, then go hunting, but be back for practice on Monday. 

“But if John wasn’t there ... " 

JOHN KNOWLES was a coach to the end. 

Fittingly, last fall, John coached the eighth grade football team at Sandpoint Middle School, a team Ryan’s son played on. John had said it would be his final season of coaching, and after the final game, his players doused him. 

“He was like having John Wayne in ‘The Quiet Man’ on your staff,” Puailoa said. “Best thing you could say about John was, he really cared about people, and he was like a father figure with kids. He was a soft-spoken guy with a big heart.” 

“John was just too easy to be with ... he was just one of us,” McNulty said. “One of the people that you wanted to be with and enjoy.” 

“We’re going to miss him; we’re going to be thankful for what we had,” Ryan said. 

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 X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports. 

    Courtesy photo John Knowles played defensive end at the University of Idaho.
  

    Courtesy photo Members of the Sandpoint High football coaching staff gathered on the houseboat of John Knowles prior to the 2003 season. In the front row from left are Crosby Tajan and Steve Miller; second row from left, John Knowles, Wayne Stringfellow and Mike McNulty; and back row from left, Yogi Vasquez, Tom Albertson, Dave DeMers, Satini Puailoa III, Chris Lassen and Tony Delewese. Not pictured is Ray Miller and Bill Barlow.