THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: TALES FROM THE ROAD: Remembering trips to Grangeville for state play-in games

Tyler Haynes like to call it “Strangeville.”

No particular reason.

‘I just have nicknames for everything,” said the former Sandpoint High boys basketball coach, and son of the late Donny Haynes, legendary coach. “Opponents and towns, rather than call them by their real names … “

Anyway, “Strangeville” is actually Grangeville, normally the site for state play-in games for basketball involving District 1 teams — though this year, because a road closure well south of Grangeville on U.S. 95, the two girls play-in games scheduled for Saturday — pitting Lake City (5A) and Kellogg (2A) vs. District 3 squads — were moved north to Lewiston.

TYLER HAYNES played for his dad as a senior at Coeur d’Alene in 1988-89. He later was an assistant at Meridian — where his dad won a state title years earlier — before coming north to coach the Sandpoint boys in the 1997-98 season.

But the next year, with no teaching job available in Sandpoint, Haynes returned to coaching at Meridian.

As it turned out, in 1999, Meridian played a state play-in game in Grangeville against … Sandpoint.

“That was an interesting situation; I had coached those kids the year before,” Haynes said of Sandpoint. “Needless to say, we had a pretty good scouting report.”

AS A senior at Coeur d’Alene High, Kris Knowles and the Vikings beat Caldwell in double overtime at Grangeville to go to state.

“Lewiston had beaten us in Coeur d’Alene in a really tough district championship game, and we had to go down to Grangeville,” said Knowles, now the athletic director at Sandpoint High. “I have been to Grangeville a lot of times as a coach and an administrator; it is just a great, old, ‘Hoosiers’-style gym. And I just love it. It’s my personal favorite in the state of Idaho.”

In addition to playing there once, he’s coached in the gym “four or five times.”

In 2007, Knowles was an assistant to Darren Taylor at Lake City when the T-Wolves beat Capital in OT to get to state.

A week later, Lake City stunned Coeur d’Alene in the state championship game in Nampa.

“I’ve got a pretty soft spot for Grangeville,” Knowles said. “I absolutely love that place.”

JIM WINGER is in his 24th season as Lake City boys basketball coach.

But for two seasons before starting the T-Wolves’ program in 1994, he was head coach at his alma mater, Coeur d’Alene High.

So he was on the bench when Knowles and the Vikings won that overtime game, on a late shot by Jason Wood, to get to state.

“It was an insane game,” he recalled. “We went down on a school bus, played Caldwell (led by Danny Bower, who went on to play at BYU). They pull up in a Greyhound, and they’ve got their band, and we’re like going, ‘OK’ ... it was an insane game from the start.”

Winger took a Lake City team to Grangeville for the first time in 2003 — the year after the T-Wolves finished second at state. Lake City lost the next year in the play-in to Centennial, which went on to win the state title.

In 2018 in Grangeville, Lake City drew the top seed out of District 3, Boise, which had been upset in its district tournament.

“We were a little overmatched in that one,” Winger recalled.

Still …

“It’s really an intriguing gym,” Winger said of Grangeville. “Just this little domed, wooden roofed, really small gym, where 10 people sound like 2,000 anywhere else. Out kind of in the middle of nowhere, and you’re playing someone you don’t know, other than through scouting reports. ... you tee it up in the afternoon, before not a real big crowd, but in a ‘Hoosiers’-type gym, to fight for your life to get to the state tournament. It’s different.”

Of course, as much fun as going to Grangeville is, coaches would rather not have to — that means they’ve already punched their ticket to state.

“Really, not to have to have a team go there this year is awful nice, to be honest with you,” Winger said a few years back, in a season where his T-Wolves won the regional title.

THESE DAYS, the IHSAA uses “neutral” officials for the state play-in games — if the game matches teams from District 1 and 3, District 2 officials are used, and if teams from District 2 and 3 are playing, District 1 officials call the game.

Before that, and especially before the advent of three-person officiating crews, if the game pitted a District 1 school vs. one from District 3, District 1 would send one ref, District 3 the other.

“The state wants neutral officials on these games, which I don’t think is a bad thing, because I’ve worked plenty of those games,” said John Posnick, until recently a longtime basketball official, and longtime District 1 basketball commissioner.

“In District 2, their whole thing is the coaches' vote (as far as which refs advance to state),” Posnick said. “The good ones are great. But you’ve got some of those marginal guys, you felt like The Lone Ranger out there. You felt like this guy was going to give them a homer job. ... I remember working with a guy from District 2, you go over to meet the coach and he thanked him for his vote.

“I’m thinking, ‘Jesus, this is going to be a long day,’” Posnick said. “Sure enough, he was thanking him back — anything that was close, he was going to give it to the local team.”

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @CdAPressSports.