THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Megan Cummings Knowles — 'She just kinda seemed like she did it all'

Megan Cummings, from Ferris High in Spokane, was a star soccer player at the University of Idaho in the late 1990s and early 2000s. 

Ryan Knowles, a former Sandpoint High football star, was playing on the defensive line for the Vandals during that time. 

A mutual friend at Idaho, Sam Sletager, who graduated with Ryan from Sandpoint in 1997, introduced them in the winter of 2000-01. 

"I don't know how I talked her into dating me, but I did," Ryan recalled. 

"One of the first times we were hanging out, I told her, 'I'm going to be a coach,'" Ryan said.  

"Oh, really," Megan replied. 

"Yeah, I mean it."  

"OK, sounds good."  

"I guess it was me trying to scare her off — you sure you want to keep hanging out?" Ryan said. 

No, being a coach's wife wasn't going to scare off the future Megan Cummings Knowles. 

Megan and Ryan married in 2004. She supported him through his coaching jobs in Issaquah, Wash., Moscow, Hamilton, N.Y., and back to Sandpoint, where he became football coach at his alma mater in 2018. 

All the while, she worked her way up the ladder in a 23-year career at Accenture, a management consulting firm, helping raise their two kids — Aubrey, now a sophomore at Gonzaga University, and Drew, a sophomore and starting defensive end at Sandpoint High. 

"She was just so easy to be around," Ryan said. "Such low drama; she never liked drama. Very organized, very conscientious, and thoughtful.  

"Even at the end ... she made life easy." 

Megan Cummings Knowles was diagnosed with cancer in 2023, and passed away on Aug. 6. 

She was 46. 

"She was always so positive and happy, you would have never known she was sick," said Kimberly Eck, wife of former Idaho coach Jason Eck, and who has been friends with Megan for more than 20 years. "She wasn't going to let that take that happiness away from her."

MEGAN CUMMINGS Knowles was a three-time All-Big West selection in soccer at Idaho, a member of the program's first team in 1998. She remains among the program's all-time leaders in points, assists, goals and game-winning goals. 

Julie Holt, the women's basketball coach at Idaho at that time, watched her play a couple of times. 

"She was an animal, I'm telling you," Holt said. "Her thing was, she was such a leader, and so competitive, and just hustle and grit and full of fire. Then she'd walk off and give you this smile ... you'd never know that she could get after it as an athlete." 

Megan graduated from Idaho in 2003. Ryan, who came to Idaho a year before Megan, graduated a year earlier, then student taught at Central Valley High in Spokane Valley. 

Megan's first job with Accenture was in the Seattle area. Ryan found a job as an elementary school math teacher, and as an assistant football coach at Kentridge High in Kent. 

Ryan longed to be a college coach, and the first step is usually as a graduate assistant. 

"One day we went to the IHOP in Issaquah," Ryan recalled. 

"'Megan, I'm going to try to go GA again.' She literally just started crying right in front of me ... 'What are we doing?' She picked her head up, wiped her tears off and said, 'OK, let's do it.'  

"That's such a Megan-ism — 'let's do it; we'll figure it out.'" 

Megan called Accenture, and was moved into a role with the company that allowed her to work from home. 

Meanwhile, Ryan said he called Nick Holt, then the Idaho football coach, "about 450 times" and eventually landed a GA job in  Moscow. He was a graduate assistant for the Vandals in the 2025 season. 

"That's when Megan got indoctrinated into college coaching, and got really well-mentored by Julie Holt (Nick's wife); she was an amazing coach's wife mentor," Ryan said. 

That's where Megan also met Kimberly Eck and Dayna Cregg, whose husbands, Jason Eck and James Cregg, were assistants on that 2005 Vandal staff. Jason Eck returned to Moscow as head coach of the Vandals for three seasons (2022-24), and is now in his second season as head coach at New Mexico.

"Back then, the wives that wanted to participate, we had a 'wives meeting.'" Julie Holt said. "We talked about the commitment to the job, that it's more than just a job, it's a lifestyle. It's time consuming, and a lot of hard work.  

"You might be in the grocery store, trying to pick out broccoli, and somebody might come up to and say, 'Your team sucks.' How do you handle those kind of things?  

"It is difficult when your husband's gone a lot, and you're trying to raise the kids," Julie said. "In talking with Ryan, a coach's wife like Megan can make the coach's life so much easier. Or you can make it a lot harder. There's a real love in trying to make things better and easier ... Megan was great." 

AFTER ONE year on the Idaho staff, Ryan heard about an opening for a defensive line coach at Colgate University. 

"I remember telling Megan, 'I'm going to go interview for a job in New York.'"  

"Oh, OK." 

When Ryan got the job, he found a rental in New York that "seemed like a real good deal." 

Then he went back home to get Megan, and they drove back to New York. 

"Megan didn't cry a lot, but she walked into this place and just started bawling," Ryan recalled. "It was a dump; it was an absolute dump. They didn't clean it after the previous renters, so we opened up the fridge and there's a moldy sandwich in it. The bathroom wasn't clean ....  

"I had to ask for a lot of forgiveness, one more time." 

Ryan coached at Colgate for 12 seasons. Both kids were born while they were back there — Aubrey in 2007, Drew in 2010. 

Aubrey is studying biomedical engineering at GU. 

"I always call her mini-Megan," Ryan said. "She's got such a good head on her shoulders, she's so organized, and takes pride in being like her mom." 

When the Sandpoint job came open, Ryan got a call from Sandpoint High principal Tom Albertson — Ryan's freshman football coach. 

Ryan wasn't interested ... at first. Colgate was loaded at the time — the year he left for Sandpoint, Colgate won 10 games and reached the FCS playoffs, losing to eventual national champion North Dakota State. 

Then he thought of the instability of being a college assistant, vs. the potential stability of being a high school coach — especially in your hometown. And the impact that would have on his family. 

"(Megan) said I'll support you if you want to stay," Ryan said, "but it would be kind of fun to build a house and have some stability." 

Ryan took the Sandpoint job, and is now in his ninth season as Bulldogs coach. 

Ryan's dad, John, a longtime former Sandpoint assistant football coach, built houses prior to his passing in 2024. 

They found a lot in Dover Bay, and John was the foreman on the construction of Ryan and Megan's home. 

"To see her and my dad design a house of her dreams was just unbelievable ... the best gift ever," Ryan said. 

Julie Holt remembers Megan as that competitive soccer player, but also as a supportive coach's wife and loving mother. 

"Have you ever heard of Ying and Yang?" Julie said. "They are total opposites. It is hard to find a person that can be hard and soft, and Megan was one of those people — so kind, and loving to people, and humble, and brilliant ... but then on the other hand, she was just this fierce, gritty competitor. And you wouldn't know it, because of her humbleness and her kindness. She was just so loving to everybody. She would smile and light up a whole room. You don't always get that with someone who can also be gritty and fierce, and pretty much a beast." 

THIS SUMMER, Megan got the call — she was going to be inducted into the University of Idaho Athletics Hall of Fame. 

The induction ceremony was in September. 

Ryan spoke on his wife's behalf. 

"Hardest thing I've ever done in my life," he said. "I just wanted to make sure everyone knew her story."

Megan's celebration of life is scheduled for Saturday in Sagle. 

A soccer endowment for Megan has been set up at the University of Idaho at https://me-l.co/dn4890cp 

"She's just such a grounding force," Ryan said. "She made things so easy. I miss that stability, that rock." 

Later, Kimberly Eck watched a video of Ryan's speech.  

"Everything he said was how I felt about her," Kimberly said. "She just kinda seemed like she did it all. She was a great mother, obviously successful in her career. She was just a beautiful person. 

She was just amazing." 

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. 

    Megan Cummings Knowles
 

    Courtesy photo Megan, left, and Ryan Knowles, with Jason Eck, wife Kimberly, and daughter Lola, in 2024 in Moscow.