Ron Miller has coached so long down on the reservation, that he was a coach back in the days when there was a Plummer High School.

He has coached football at Lakeside High for the past two decades, and girls basketball for the Knights longer than that.

But following last season, citing family reasons, Miller stepped down as girls coach.

"I have been baseball coach and softball coach, and volunteered with the track program," Miller said. "But I've got some grandkids that I want to spend some time with."

Miller said all told, he's coached in the girls basketball program at Plummer/Lakeside for 26 years, starting in 1986 as the junior varsity coach at Plummer.

His first year as head girls coach was 1989-90, and he guided Plummer to the state A-4 title in its last year before Plummer and Worley high schools combined to form Lakeside.

Miller first resigned as girls coach following the 2000-01 season. The oldest of his daughters was nearing high school age, and "I didn't want my kids to go through the hassle of dad being the coach," he said.

Well, as sometimes happens at small schools, he was also athletic director at the time. He hired a coach, then she resigned after a season, then the next year they couldn't find a JV coach, so he stepped in.

In 2004, he became head coach again, beginning another eight-year stint.

Nine of his teams went to state, including six in a row from 1995-2000.

BUT NOW, with no more daughters left to coach, and grandkids to visit in Puyallup, Wash., Miller figured it was as good a time as any to step aside.

Still only 52, he's a few years from retirement as a teacher at Lakeside. And who knows, small schools being what they are, he could end up back on the bench one of these years.

But for now, there’s one more benefit to no longer being a basketball coach.

“This is the first Thanksgiving (in a long time) where I haven’t had to go to practice on Friday morning,” he said.

• Jim Landers will have more on Saturday’s Boise State-Oregon State wrestling dual, scheduled for 5 p.m. at Central Valley High in Spokane, in Friday’s paper.

But the back story of how the match ended up in this neck of the woods might be just as interesting as the dual itself.

John Owen, the former North Idaho College wrestling coach, and his wife Janet were driving to Boise this summer to get their son, Brian, a BSU wrestler, set up for school there.

He had a good rapport with Bronco assistant Chris Owens, as together they share a passion for fly fishing. But he’d never met BSU head coach Greg Randall, and made it a point to stop by and meet him while he was in Boise.

They got to talking, and Randall said there were issues securing a date at Taco Bell Arena in Boise for the Broncos’ dual with Oregon State and, Owen said, Randall made some off-handed comment about moving the match to Spokane — it would roughly be the same distance for Oregon State to travel.

“A week later my phone rang, and here we are,” John Owen said.

And Owen said the time was ripe for a wrestling match here, with local high school teams just starting to get ready for their seasons.

Owen, who is in his second year in his second stint as Central Valley coach, plans to set up a 32-inch-high platform for the dual to take place on. He used a similar platform in the 1990s while at NIC, when the USA national team wrestled Russia at NIC.

After leaving NIC, Owen coached at CV for six years and at West Valley for two. When his son, Tommy, left CV the year before last to take an assistant coaching job at George Mason, J.O., as he is known, moved back to CV.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter at CdAPressSports.