Though the Sandpoint Bulldogs lost last year’s football game to the Coeur d’Alene Vikings, 24-22, the result was a bit of an eye-opener for North Idaho fans — an up-and-coming 4A squad nearly pulling off an upset of a perennial state 5A power.

Sandpoint went on to play for the state 4A championship, while Coeur d’Alene reached the state 5A playoffs for the 13th straight season.

This year, both are looking for their first victories of the season when Sandpoint (0-1) plays at Coeur d’Alene (0-2) tonight at 7.

Sandpoint is coming off a 16-15 loss to Alta of Sandy, Utah, last Saturday at the Rocky Mountain Rumble in Rexburg.

Coeur d’Alene opened with a 24-0 loss to second-ranked Rigby, last year’s state 5A champion, in Missoula, then fell 30-7 last week to top-ranked Rocky Mountain in Meridian.

“They’re going to be as hungry as it gets,” Sandpoint coach Ryan Knowles said of Coeur d’Alene. “They’ve been playing some of the best teams in the state, and they’re a proud program with some tremendous coaches. I know our boys have been looking forward to it as well.”

“They’ve got a lot of dudes back,” Coeur d’Alene coach Shawn Amos, in his 26th season with the Vikings, said of Sandpoint. “They’re going to be real good. And it’s nice to have Sandpoint back in a position like that. To be able to play a team 45 minutes away that’s going to be tough, that saves us a lot of bus time. We’re all for it.”

Until recently, Sandpoint and Coeur d’Alene had seemingly played every year since the invention of the pigskin.

But after Coeur d’Alene won 88-12 in Sandpoint in 2011, the teams didn’t play again until 2020, when the Vikings won 55-0 at home.

Then there was last year’s thriller.

And now, this year’s matchup.

Coeur d’Alene has won the last five meetings with Sandpoint. The Bulldogs’ last win over the Vikings was in 2008, 27-7 at Coeur d’Alene.

Knowles, in his fifth season as head coach at his alma mater, said playing Coeur d’Alene close last year may have had the opposite effect on his team than you might expect.

“I think it made us overconfident, unfortunately,” Knowles said. “I think we thought we were good after that, and then we went down and got smoked by Homedale (38-21) the next week. We learned some valuable lessons.”

Knowles said there was a lot of good to come out of the Alta game, and that many of the miscues were typical first-game mistakes which can usually be ironed out.

“We just have to go execute,” Knowles said. “We got great film of their mistakes, and their positive plays, and we’ll just sand out all the rough spots and see who can play.”