By JASON ELLIOTT

Sports writer

COEUR d’ALENE — After winning the past two 5A Region 1 titles, did you think a silly thing like graduation was going to keep the Coeur d’Alene girls from getting to a third?

Sure, the Vikings might have been hit by graduation. But those new kids, they’re earning their horns.

“I think with a lot of people leaving last year and us being a younger team than in previous years, nobody thought we were going to come out like we did,” Coeur d'Alene senior guard Skylar Burke said. “Now, maybe we’ll have some eyes on us.”

Junior post Madi Symons scored 21 points, Burke added 17 for the Vikings, who pulled away in the second quarter to beat the Lake City Timberwolves 62-48 in an Inland Empire League game at Lake City High.

“We’ve talked about the expectations for Viking basketball is to win,” Coeur d'Alene coach Nicole Symons said. “Especially Skylar and the rest of the senior group that have worked to change that in the last three years. That’s what we want to continue. It was a great team win. We talked about what they wanted to do against us, and how to handle it. And we handled it really well.”

Coeur d’Alene limited Lake City to only two 3-pointers in the game.

“Lake City’s a really good team and can shoot it really well,” Madi Symons said. “We knew if we could take away the 3, we could work from that.”

“Lake City shoots 50 to 60 percent from the 3-point line, so we just really talked about how to defend that,” Nicole Symons said. “I think we gave up too many lay-ins in the second half because we were so worried about the 3-pointer, so we’ll have to work on that in the next few weeks. I knew if we could stop that, we’d be in the ballgame tonight.”

Lake City (14-2, 4-1 IEL) hosts Lewiston on Thursday. The Timberwolves beat the Bengals 65-50 in their previous matchup on Nov. 23 in Lewiston.

“We need to play with a little more urgency,” Lake City coach James Anderson said. “We have a tendency to come out a little passive sometimes and not urgent in what we do. We allowed them to come out and throw the first punch and never really felt like we got our legs where we wanted to. They came out and got after us and deserved to win.”

Lily Phenicie had 10 points off the bench for Coeur d’Alene (13-3, 4-0 IEL), which hosts Post Falls on Friday.

Burke eclipsed the 1,000-point barrier with a basket in the third quarter and now has 1,007 for her Viking career.

“I knew I was close, but it was really the last thing on my mind,” said Burke, who signed with UC Santa Barbara in November. “I just wanted to do everything I could to make sure we could come out with the win.”

“These last couple of weeks, we’ve played some really tough teams,” Madi Symons said. “Our younger kids continue to step up and hit big shots. Kendall (Holecek), Libby (Awbery) and Maddie Mitchell have been hitting some big shots and playing well.”

Junior Emberlyn Reynolds scored 16 points for Lake City.

“She just keeps getting better and better each game,” Anderson said. “She works so hard and deserves it. She continues to get better around the rim and is becoming a special player for us.”

Coeur d’Alene graduated seven seniors from last year’s team.

“We’ve got two girls that played varsity, and it’s a big game,” Nicole Symons said. “Lake City’s the No. 1 team in the state and we had to prove ourselves and prove we’re still a darn good basketball team.”

Coeur d’Alene 14 17 19 12 — 62

Lake City 9 13 12 14 — 48

COEUR d’ALENE — Mitchell 6, Naccarato 0, Burke 17, Symons 21, Phenicie 10, Awbery 3, Holecek 5.

LAKE CITY — Zufelt 9, Waddington 0, Ke. Pickford 5, Reynolds 16, Ka. Pickford 8, McKellips 0, Bowman 10, Holzer 0.