Loren Schmidt

Loren Schmidt is soft-spoken, but ... He Carried a Big StickCoeur d'Alene Press
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Loren Schmidt, who played softball for 26 years in Coeur d'Alene, will be honored Saturday for his induction into the Idaho ASA Hall of Fame.

Loren Schmidt is soft-spoken, but ...He Carried a Big Stick

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If not for a knee injury suffered playing football in college, who knows if Loren Schmidt would even be around these days.But more on that later.Schmidt, a standout softball player in Coeur d'Alene for roughly a quarter-century, will be honored Saturday for his induction into the Idaho ASA Hall of Fame.Schmidt, who played all but two years between 1972-99, was a power-hitting third baseman, and later a pitcher, on Coeur d'Alene men's slowpitch teams that won numerous state titles and went to nationals more than a dozen times."He was probably the best player in town for about a 10-year period," said Coeur d'Alene Recreation Director and Idaho ASA Commissioner Steve Anthony, who nominated Schmidt for the honor.
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"It's definitely a cool thing," Schmidt said of the honor."You play for so many years, it's nice to be recognized.It's almost like an embarrassment, too, in some ways; you don't really know how to react."
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Schmidt, who lives in Hayden and turns 50 in August, remembers hitting 14-20 home runs in a tournament.At Memorial Field in Coeur d'Alene, he remembers hitting a house across the street, past the left field fence -- an estimated 400 feet away.He recalls one tourney where he went 34-for-36.But, "I'd rather hit .900 in a tournament than hit a lot of home runs," said Schmidt, who was 6-foot-1, 220 pounds during his playing days.Schmidt graduated in 1970 from Coeur d'Alene High School, where he played baseball, basketball and football.He also played for Coeur d'Alene's American Legion baseball team.His senior year at Coeur d'Alene, he recalls carrying the ball in a single-wing offense about 40 times a game, for roughly 1,500 yards.He remembers a game against Lewiston where he carried the ball on 48 of 50 plays -- and he threw the ball on the other two.He went to Boise State as a running back, where he played as a freshman, then redshirted his second year.During that year, Boise State played a freshman game vs.Weber State at Buhl.Both teams also sent some redshirts along to play, but because that's sort of against the rules, they had to play under the names of freshmen.Schmidt played as Terry Boots.
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Schmidt switched to outside linebacker, where he started the last three years.He was an all-Big Sky selection as a junior and senior, and a third-team small-college All-American as a senior.Boise State made it to the Division I-AA title game during Schmidt's junior year, losing to Louisiana Tech in the Pioneer Bowl.The next year, BSU lost at Central Michigan in the I-AA semifinals, where "It was like minus-6."After college, Schmidt played a couple of games at outside linebacker with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League until a player came off the injured list and Schmidt was told, "We can only have 14 Americans, and you're the 15th."Schmidt recalled the negotiation session for his contract."They said, 'We'll give you $16,000 for the 16 weeks and if you don't like it, here's your plane ticket home."After that, he worked one year as an assistant football coach at Boise High, then decided to return to Coeur d'Alene, where he's worked and played softball pretty much ever since.He played in the old days of livelier balls and not-as-lively bats, and more recently in the days of restricted-flight balls powered by double-wall DeMarini's.He thinks the ball went farther in the old days, but he admits he was younger and stronger then."His home runs weren't majestic drives, because he didn't have a loop in his swing," Foster said."His were ropes -- they got out in a hurry."The home run limits (in the later years) didn't bother him, because he was a line-drive hitter.He just got base hits.""For me, it was a great way to still compete," Schmidt said of playing softball after his football career."It satisfied my urge to compete."

Schmidt, othersto be honored

An open house for Loren Schmidt, who has been inducted into the Idaho ASA Hall of Fame, is scheduled for Saturday at 6 p.m. at Paddy's, 601 W. Appleway in Coeur d'Alene.Most inductees, from southern and eastern Idaho, are honored at a luncheon at the annual state ASA board of directors meeting in Boise in late February.North Idaho inductees unable to attend are often feted at local gatherings, such as Saturday's.