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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

State B would lose traditional teams if WIAA proposal passes

So long, Sprague-Harrington. Goodbye, Curlew. See ya, Sunnyside Christian. Later, LaCrosse-Washtucna.

All of those schools will participate in the State B Basketball Tournament, which opens this morning at the Spokane Arena. But in two years, their teams could be headed to Yakima or the Tri-Cities or Tacoma for another tournament.

Such could be the case if the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association’s Representative Assembly votes this April to add a sixth, or C, classification for state high schools.

When the Rep Assembly, as it is commonly called, voted last year to move the WIAA away from raw numbers determining in which class a school would participate, the organization knew some fine-tuning would have to take place.

Starting in fall 2006, the smallest 28 percent of all Washington’s high schools will be B schools, and the other four classes (1A, 2A, 3A, 4A) will each contain 18 percent of the rest.

Under the old rule, a school with a monthly average of 1,150 students enrolled in grades 10 through 12 would fall in the 3A classification, along with the others with enrollments between 601 and 1,200.

With the new rule, the WIAA hopes to even out the number of schools in each classification, eliminating the current discrepancy highlighted by 4A including 91 schools and 2A only 51.

But another WIAA aim is to have schools play other like-size schools, with a goal of not having a greater discrepancy than two times. Over the past nine months, members realized the new rule not only didn’t solve that for the Bs, it made the discrepancy greater.

So the WIAA’s nine district secretaries, with support of the organization’s Executive Board, proposed a new amendment, originally put forward by small B schools in the Yakima Valley and seconded by schools in the north-central part of the state.

That amendment will be voted on at the Rep Assembly this April. Instead of five classifications with a 28-18-18-18-18 split, the representatives will be asked to approve a sixth classification (the C class) for the smallest 16 percent of schools. The B would be the next largest at 16 percent, with the top four categories each with 17 percent.

Using the most current enrollment numbers, WIAA officials project schools with 86 or fewer students in grades 10 through 12 would be C, those with 87 to 188 students would be in the B ranks. The four schools mentioned at the start of this story all fall into this (C) category, along with six other schools that made it to this year’s tournament.

In the Whitman County League, only Asotin is assured of being a B school. Garfield-Palouse is right on the line, while other schools, such as St. John-Endicott, would be C schools.

Spokane, home of the B Basketball Tournament since 1958, wouldn’t be the host of the C edition.

“We’re not going to have the option to be there two weekends,” said WIAA Executive Director Mike Colbrese.

The Spokane Chiefs, the Arena’s main tenant, yield the ice for the Bs for one week. A second week in the middle of their stretch run is out of the question.

Which could mean a major transformation for schools such as St. John-Endicott.

“Right now a lot of the people in the community haven’t heard of the classifications yet, because it is just out there as an amendment right now,” said Bob Clements, athletic director and boys basketball coach of the Eagles, who have won the tournament in some configuration or gender eight times.

“We just got told about it a week ago. But with the tradition down here and the Bs…there are going to be some people, that…it is going to (effect), because we won’t be going to the B Tournament, per se. We would be going to the C Tournament. And that’s going to hit some people, yeah.”

Colbrese said the WIAA is just responding to the requests of its members.

“You have schools that are saying they want to go to Spokane, but they are schools that have never been there to start with,” Colbrese said. “The very schools that are pushing this amendment are pushing it because they have never been to Spokane. They want to be in Spokane, but we don’t have an option to be in Spokane two weeks in a row.”

A yes vote for the C classification is also a yes vote for a co-amendment that makes the C class the only one playing 8-man football. B schools would have to play 11-man, which could be tough for schools near the enrollment line.

Smaller schools would have to make a decision. If they still want to play in Spokane the first week of March, the football program may suffer.

“The thing is, we love 8-man football too,” Clements said. “We were 11-man for a few years; because of our enrollment, we had to. We just don’t have the athletes, the numbers. With 18 kids playing football in grades 9 to 12, that’s hard to compete in 11-man.”

At Sprague-Harrington, which has experienced B-8 success, football will be a big part of the equation, though the serious discussions haven’t started yet.

“It makes it real difficult if you are one of the smaller schools trying to compete at the higher level of 11-man football,” said Harrington athletic director Clay Henry, noting the combined schools enrollment of less than 70 students.

“We’ve not really examined the full depth because everything is a proposal, and the WIAA has a history of coming up with proposals that don’t fly. When something comes out hard on paper, that’s when we will actually take a hard look at it.”

But Henry also understands the engine behind B sports, an engine that is powered by most school’s dream of playing in Spokane.

“I don’t know if football will come into play because, really, the B in B-level sports means basketball,” Henry said. “It doesn’t mean football, it doesn’t mean track, it doesn’t mean golf. It doesn’t mean anything other than basketball.”

What if football is sacrificed for the ability to play in Spokane?

“And that might be what comes down to,” Henry said, “but that would be from the school board and I really don’t have a say in that. As athletic director, I just kind of give them my objective view and then they can take it and make their decision.”

School boards throughout the Inland Northwest may have to make the same decision within the next year, as communities decide the future of their high school athletics.

When asked if he felt like St. John-Endicott is stuck between a rock and a hard place, Clements answered, “We are.

“Whichever way we go, we’ll wait and see what happens with the amendment. We will have to sit down and talk with the school board and people in the community. It will be an administration and school board decision.

“You know, there are changes going all the time in sports, and this is just one more thing we have to look at.”