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Written By: Will Hoenike

A summer of uncertainty has led to an autumn of hope in Potlatch, where Ryan Ball is the football program’s new head coach and the school is fielding a varsity team in 2018.

How uncertain was it? The Moscow-Pullman Daily News reported on August 2 that the Loggers would be fielding a full varsity team. The team’s first game is August 24, barely three weeks later.

The Loggers began camp in August with 21 players, including nine freshmen. One of the key points for Ball was having enough upper classmen where the big class of freshmen would not be forced to, in essence, be the team. The Loggers had to forfeit their final two games of 2017 due to a lack of healthy players and the goal is to avoid a recurrence of that in 2018.

The key piece of the puzzle is Ball, who takes over a program that has won just two of its previous 25 games. However, the ingredients to success are all around. First off, take the quality of athletes in Potlatch. It is the same boys who routinely compete for (and win) 1A state baseball championships. It is the same boys who won 17 basketball games last winter and 16 the season before that (it should be noted who coaches the Potlatch boys basketball team – Ryan Ball). There are good athletes who know how to win games.

And Ball himself is an experienced, accomplished football coach who spent 15 seasons as the head man at White Pine rival Kamiah. He helped the Kubs win the 2012 state championship.

So you have a coach who knows how to win and athletes who know how to win. The coach knows the athletes and the athletes know the coach. Like an old chemistry experiment, let’s mix the two and see what happens.

We’ll start to see on August 24 when the Loggers take on 1A Division 2 power Deary at home before traveling to Timberline of Weippe the following week. Then, on September 7, Ball and his Loggers will host his former team, Kamiah, in Potlatch.