Huckleberries: Fans run full-court press down basketball memory lane

Laurie Semich Jaeger was there, too – you know, at the inaugural game on the new Coeur d’Alene High basketball court in late fall 1970. She was a freshman. Remember. On Thursday, Raymond Pert/Kellogg Bloggin’ discussed how the Viks, with 6-foot-9 ½ Dick Shafer, ran over his Kellogg Wildcats in a 106-57 rout. (BTW, Pert and another Kellogg High grad, John Austin, commented at Huckleberries Online Thursday that Kellogg returned the favor and shocked Idaho the following year by beating CHS on a last-second shot by Don Knott.) In an e-mail, Laurie, a local workers’ compensation coordinator whose family once manufactured hot-air balloons on Fernan Hill, follows Shafer further. Seems he attended the University of Arizona on a scholarship, until he blew out his knee. Then, he moved to Alaska, married, and raised six children. According to Laurie, the oldest one of those kids migrated to Oregon and became a Duck. Last year, as a sophomore, 7-foot Ray started at center for the Oregon Ducks. His brothers inherited height and basketball talent from the paterfamilias, too. Laurie, who returned to Idaho in 1999 and later married David Jaeger, says her family and the Shafers were good friends growing up. She also has another connection to the University of Oregon. Her sister-in-law, Carol Jaeger (wife of former Coeur d’Alene High teacher Jim Jaeger) purchases the uniforms for the majority of the UO sports teams, “but not those less-than-attractive football uniforms they came out with a couple of years ago.” Thank goodness.