History, records and champions: East Idaho Sports’ top stories of 2025
Published at
EASTERN IDAHO — As we wrap up the first full calendar year of East Idaho Sports, our team celebrates the year with our favorite stories.
The East Idaho Sports staff covered hundreds of live sporting events, including champions, record-setting performances and heart-wrenching stories of unprecedented success and unimaginable loss. We have been proud to bring you coverage from all those eastern Idaho sporting events.
In no particular order, here are out 10 favorite stories from the year that was.
Perfection: Sugar-Salem finishes strong against Bear Lake to earn 4A title and cap an unbeaten season
“They just proved you can be perfect I guess.”
Perfect indeed.
Sugar-Salem girls basketball coach Crystal Dayley said she didn’t talk much to her team about an undefeated season, even as the Diggers rolled over opponents by an average of 25 points.
Read the rest of the story here.
Blackfoot, Madison baseball teams honor former Bobcat Eliah Gordo, 8 months after his death
As is usually the case when dealing with the death of a child, Eliah Gordo’s passing last August left a massive hole in his family. But this death also left a sizable vacancy in the eastern Idaho baseball community.
Gordo spent three seasons as part of the Madison High School varsity baseball team — playing and pitching on the varsity squad since his freshman year.
Read the rest of the story here.
It’s baseball on a global level for this trio of Chukars
From Tulane University in New Orleans, to Milan, Italy, to Chicago, it’s been quite a journey to Idaho Falls this summer for three Chukars players.
But for Simon Baumgardt, Ben Rosengard and Nicolo Pinazzi, the hope is that their time at Melaleuca Field can be a springboard for playing baseball on a global level.
Read the rest of the story here.
Why I was impressed by a team that lost by 58 points
The Sho-Ban Chiefs were never supposed to win.
Sho-Ban High School has not fielded a football team since the 2019 season. The Chiefs feature only one player with past experience playing organized football, and their coach, though he is a former D1 player and high-level coach, had no previous experience with the eight-man game. And they were facing a Rockland Bulldogs team with legitimate state championship aspirations, under the bright lights of the ICCU Dome and Rocky Mountain Rumble.
Read the rest of the story here.
Bandits didn’t win the World Series this year, but a dispute with American Legion baseball should lead to rule changes
Did the Idaho Falls Bandits baseball team get robbed of a return trip to the American Legion World Series?
That’s a question that still lingers, even weeks after the national tournament.
Read the rest of the story here.
Anatomy of a rivalry: What makes a good football rivalry? Which are the best offered in eastern Idaho
We at East Idaho Sports recently asked the members of our public Facebook group which high school football rivalry they found most compelling. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the responses were scattered, with Rigby-Madison earning a majority vote.
Then, earlier this week, MaxPreps published, again on Facebook, that it had selected Skyline-Idaho Falls as the state’s top sports rivalry.
All this discussion begs the question: What makes a rivalry?
Read the rest of the story here.
Signing day: When dreams come true
You’ve seen the photos.
High school athletes sitting behind a table, smiles as big as the crescent moon, surrounded by friends and family, dreams ready to become a reality with the stroke of a pen.
Read the rest of the story here.
Four local teams compete at cheerleading national championships; three bring home banners
It is not completely outlandish to say that eastern Idaho is the new home to high-level high school cheerleading.
Last month, some 250 high school cheer squads from across the nation — primarily the west coast — converged on Las Vegas for the JAMZ School Cheer Nationals. After two days of intense competition, banners were handed out to top teams from different levels of competition for different routines (performance types). And at the end of the weekend, six of those banners came home to Idaho.
Read the rest of the story here.
Living a dream: After winning a state title at Hillcrest, Cooper and Kobe Kesler reunited as teammates at CSI
Cooper and Kobe Kesler always wanted to play college basketball together.
Why not?
The brothers, Cooper one year ahead of Kobe, had been playing together on youth teams since they were old enough to dribble a basketball.
Read the rest of the story here.
IHSAA considering state tourney realignment; D5, which has won 6 of 10 boys basketball 5A banners, would benefit
Can a tournament winner be called “state champion” if they aren’t playing the best teams in the state?
That is the type of thought the coaches of the now-5A District 5 — South East Idaho Conference — boys basketball teams have been pondering for several years.
Read the rest of the story here.
Thank you for following East Idaho Sports the past year and a half, we appreciate your continued support.
Get more sports news here