THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Fisk on hiring Cd'A grad Kastens, and fighting the home-field fight at Portland State

Chris Fisk has been scouting Coeur d'Alene High grad Alex Kastens for a long time. 

These days, they are teammates. 

"I started watching him as a player," said Fisk, heading into his first season as head football coach at Portland State. 

And Kastens is on his staff, as offensive line coach/run game coordinator. 

"I coached at Southern Oregon and he played at Carroll College," Fisk said last week, at the Big Sky football media day in Airway Heights, Wash. "He was an awful good player; he had a lot of tenacity. Then he started to coach for coach (Mike) Van Diest over at Carroll. And I've always tried to track who coach Van Diest hires, or chooses to put on his staff, because usually that's an indicator of a good football coach, and an accountable person." 

Eventually, Fisk became head coach at Central Washington, while Kastens was an assistant at Carroll. 

"Went toe-to-toe recruiting against Alex out in eastern Washington, and he started beating me on a few kids — convinced them to go to Carroll College instead of Central Washington," Fisk said. "And so I invited him to start coming out to our team camps at Central, and got an opportunity to watch him coach up close. Got an opportunity at night to sit and talk to him about football and our vision for offensive line play, because that's my background — offensive line play. It matched."  

FISK SAID he had tried to hire Kastens to join him at Central for about five years, because Fisk trying to coach the O-line and be head coach was time-consuming. 

Kastens played at Carroll from 2010-14, then coached at his alma mater from 2015-19, then coached at the University of Mary (2020-21) and at William Jewell (2022-23). 

Eventually, Kastens joined Fisk's staff at Central, in 2024. 

"He's as good a coach I've ever hired, or been around," Fisk said of Kastens, a 2010 Coeur d'Alene High grad. 

So when Fisk got the job at Portland State, Kastens was one of the first guys he wanted to bring with him.  

"When I look at building a staff, your coordinators are awfully important, and you've got your strength coach, who needs to be your right-hand guy, and then you've got your O-line coach, and then everything comes behind that," Fisk said. "Alex was one of the first guys I talked to about coming with me."

Fisk was 48-22 in seven seasons at Central (2019-25, including a one-game season in 2020 due to COVID-19). 

"He's a character; he's an unbelievable team guy, and he works his tail off for the kids," Fisk said of Kastens. 

BRINGING KASTENS with him to Portland State from Central Washington was the easy part for Fisk. 

The tough part? Making the Vikings competitive in the Big Sky. 

Fisk replaces Bruce Barnum, the affable, quotable coach who went 9-3 in his first season at Portland State — then 30-72 in the next 10 seasons. 

"There's a lot of pieces that need to happen, and we started attacking those the second we got in there," Fisk said. "It's a daily fight to get those things changed, and really, it starts with our athletic director (Matt Billings) and our president (Dr. Ann Cudd), they have to have a vision, and they have to want to get good at football, which is what we have. "Those people want to do it, so now we have an opportunity to change the mindset of football around Portland State, and create a winning culture from what previously had been there. And I know coach Barnum fought the good fight, and we'll pick up the torch where he left off, and try to keep fighting that fight for him and everybody else that poured their heart and soul into that program." 

Part of the problem is not having a home football stadium in Portland — in recent years, the Vikings have had to play home games some 15 miles away, at Hillsboro Stadium. 

Portland State used to play at what is now called Providence Park in Portland. But after soccer-centric renovations at the stadium, the Vikings got the boot. Other than one game at Providence Park last November, Portland State last played there in October 2018. 

Nice of Hillsboro to look out for Portland State, but it's not home home. 

BUT FOR now ... 

"We've really decided, instead of fighting that fight, we're going to put our resources into Hillsboro right now, and upgrading that fan experience to a more college football-level fan experience, and then we'll focus on what it would take to get on campus at some point in the future," Fisk said. "I think after a decade of people at Providence Park telling us no, it's time ... I don't want to spend my time fighting the same fight that nobody had success with for a decade. I'd like to fight a different fight." 

But eventually, Fisk would like his team to play home games on an on-campus field. 

"I think for the future of the program, that's the only feasible answer," he said. "The definitition of insanity, right? ... And I think we've been fighting insanity for a long time at Providence Park, and it's time to stop being insane." 

Does Fisk have the backing for such a move? 

"Time will tell," he said. "I think we have the right people at the conversation table now, and if we can keep those right people engaged, and there's a desire to have a facility like that downtown ... there's a lot of opportunity for outside people to come in and put on events at those types of places that can't go to Providence Park for the same reasons we can't go to Providence Park." 

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 1205, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports.