THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE, June 26, 2014

Hailey Jackson has been a team player for years, doing whatever the Lake City High basketball and softball teams needed.

But she has a different feeling leading up to this Sunday, when the recent Lake City graduate competes in her first Ironman - Ironman Coeur d'Alene.

"I love this," Jackson said the other day. "I told my parents I absolutely love playing a sport by myself - all the other sports I play are team sports. I just like the fact you can wake up and train on your own schedule, and push yourself, rather than have someone else do it for you. It's harder to push yourself instead of having a coach yelling at you. It feels more rewarding."

JACKSON, WHO reached the Ironman minimum age of 18 last December, wouldn't be the first person to wander down to Sherman Avenue late at night on a Sunday in late June, watch the final Ironman finishers fight with all their might to finish before the midnight deadline and be told, "You are an Ironman," and vow that she will be one of those finishers next year.

But she was one of the few to actually carry through on that vow.

"I was watching it last year, and it really inspired me," Jackson said. "I felt like this is something I could do, something I could accomplish. I talked to my cousin (Kjell Schoiberg, an Ironman veteran) and he really inspired me to go on with it and train all the way."

She started training in August. It wasn't easy. Her other sports required running, of course, but this was different. She signed up for a 5K (3.1-mile) run that month, and it didn't go well.

"My dad (Mark) said, 'I don't know ... '" she recalled.

Things got better and in January, she completed an indoor half-Ironman and he said, "OK, you can do it now."

TRAINING FOR an Ironman is hard enough in itself. Try working your training around schoolwork, around basketball practice, around softball practice.

Sometimes Jackson would leave for school in the morning, and not get home until 9 p.m.

"There were times I was exhausted and sometimes I'd show up at softball and I couldn't keep my eyes open," she recalled. "My coaches would say, 'You need to balance both, or just focus on one of them,' and I said 'I can keep doing both.' It got hard at times, for sure, but I knew I could get through it."

What kept her going?

"The race was so far away, so it was easy to give up on training," she said. "But I knew it was worth it because it was something I wanted to do for myself, and not for someone else.

"I started out doing it because I wanted to do something great and I ended up thinking, this is such a great accomplishment for myself. That was the only person I was doing this for."

WITH LAKE Coeur d'Alene getting warmer, Jackson has been swimming outdoors a lot this month. She joined the Coeur d'Alene Tri Team, meeting three times a week at the lake at 5:30 a.m. She swims at least a mile each time.

She's run as far as 17 miles, done a half-Ironman (13.1-mile run) indoors. She did a 95-mile bike ride on the original Ironman Cd'A bike course.

At her current swim pace, she expects to finish that leg in about 1 hour, 45 minutes - well ahead of the 2-hour, 20-minute cutoff time for the swim. She's averaging around 15.5 mph on the bike.

Her goal is "just to finish, to get there before midnight," she said. "I'm hoping adrenaline will really kick in too, because of all the people there, and I'm sure it will."

She said doing some sprint triathlons (1/2-mile swim, 12-mile bike, 3-mile run) with the Cd'A Tri Team helped.

"My biggest fear is probably getting kicked in the swim," Jackson said. "At the Coeur d'Alene Tri Team practice, they're nudging us and grabbing our feet (to get athletes used to swimming at Ironman), and it's really uncomfortable."

The best advice she's gotten from Schoiberg, her trainer and cousin:

"Walk on Sherman when you finish to take it in," she said she was told. "Don't run, because you only get that moment for so long."

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.