POULSBO — Nearly anyone involved in North Kitsap athletics knows the name Tony Chisholm. For those who aren’t familiar with his candid and exciting persona, they likely will be as soon as the Vikings boys basketball season begins.

Chisholm has taken the helm of a North Kitsap High School team that struggled under a freshman coach last season. And while he inherits a program that ended last year with a single digit in the win column, the 16-year veteran sees a group of players with triple digit potential.

“I’ve coached a lot of these kids for a long time, it pays off to have known them, and I think I’m getting some quality work done,” Chisholm said Monday recapping the first week of practice. “It’s about honor, pride and respect; I see all that stuff surfacing right away because they know what I expect.”

In his former years, Chisholm has seen many of this year’s Vikings throughout their career as he has been annually teaching the game to local third and fourth graders for more than a decade. He’s also handled head coaching duties for the boys program at Kingston Junior High School for the past 11.

Now embarking on his first season as head coach at the high school level, Chisholm is seeing the capstone to the progress for seniors Steven Kirk, Dietreich Rios, Eric Schippers, Cameron White, James Beisley and Brian Cleaver.

“The seniors are going to be solid,” he said. “They all add something to our game.”

With a schedule boasting its fair share of unknowns, the Vikings plan to spend the preseason adding all that they can muster to their own game before competing in the Narrows League Bay Division.

“To go across that bridge and compete against the Fosses and the Bellarmine Preps and the Stadiums, I think our guys will learn a lot from that,” Chisholm said. “That type of basketball is the fast and exciting game.”

Through the rigor of the first week of practice, the Vikings have been working to develop their top-level of conditioning in order to keep up with the fast-paced game.

Working long nights, spending up to two and half hours of practice time working on particulars, the team is anticipating its first chance to unleash it all when they travel to a four-team jamboree on Bainbridge Island Nov. 25. The Vikings will start the season with a five game road streak before hosting Central Kitsap Dec. 8.

“We’re just going to take it game by game,” Chisholm said. “I can promise this, the team that I put on the floor will be exciting to watch because we are going to get up and down the court and make things happen.”