THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Coming home paying off for Adams, Viking boys

Jon Adams stood off to the side at Viking Court last Tuesday night, watching the celebration as his Coeur d’Alene High boys basketball team and fans celebrated the Vikings’ first regional championship since 2011, and the program’s first trip to state since 2012.

“This is why I moved home from Seattle, was to do this,” said Adams, Coeur d’Alene’s fourth-year head coach. “This special moment for these players, for this school, for this community.”

Adams graduated from Coeur d’Alene High in 1991, playing for legendary coach Donny Haynes. He went on to play at Whitworth, then coached in the Seattle area for some 20 years before getting hired to coach at his alma mater in 2020.

It’s been a steady climb to get to this point.

A 7-10 record the first year.

16-6 the next season, ending with a loss in the state play-in game.

Even higher hopes the following season (15-8), which came to a premature end with a loss in the regional second-place game, where a win would have put the Vikings back into the play-in game.

THEN CAME this year, where Coeur d’Alene (20-3) won its first league title since 2016, won its first outright league crown since 2014, and takes a 10-game winning streak into the state 5A tournament beginning today at the Ford Idaho Center in Nampa.

“Jon’s meant a lot,” Coeur d’Alene senior forward Max Entzi said. “It’s unbelievable how much time he’s put into working on us … he wants to go to state and win state as bad as we do.”

“There’s no team without a coach,” Viking senior point guard Logan Orchard said. “He takes us into battle; he prepares us well … he genuinely cares.”

“All you can ask for in a coach is for him to be there for you,” senior forward Gunner Larson said. “He’s always there when we need him.”

Coeur d’Alene senior guard Trey Nipp has known Adams pretty much his whole life; the Adams and Nipp families are longtime friends.

“I actually always looked up to him as a basketball god, because that’s all he talked about,” Trey said. “Growing up, I knew he loved basketball, but when he decided to come here I was like ‘Man, he cares about his family, too.’”

NOT GONNA lie, but I was kinda pulling for a Lake City-Owyhee matchup in the first round — only because of the irony.

Lake City-Owyhee was the matchup everyone wanted to see at state the last two years, but never did, because Lake City was upset in the first round in 2022, and Owyhee stumbled in the first round last year.

Their only meeting during that time was the somewhat “accidental” one in December 2022 at North Idaho College. Both were scheduled to play different teams there as part of a four-team showcase between Idaho and Washington teams. But when three of the teams had to cancel at the last minute due to weather, Lake City and Owyhee agreed to play each other — and Lake City won by 20.

Lake City lost the bulk of last year’s undefeated championship team to graduation, but kudos to this year’s nearly new squad for making it back to state.

Owyhee, meanwhile, remains loaded.

Of course, with No. 7 seed Lake City and No. 2 Coeur d’Alene on the other side of the bracket, there’s still the possibility of top-seeded Owyhee facing a team from Coeur d’Alene in the championship.

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.