Not everyone happy with new format in GSL

Sometimes experience is overrated.

As evidence, we present Regan Freuen.

In only her second year as the head girls basketball coach at Mead High, Freuen admits most everything that happens to her is new.

So when asked this week about the revamped Greater Spokane League basketball schedule, she wanted to beg off, saying she wasn’t the right coach to ask, because she was too inexperienced.

Then she came up with a veteran answer.

“I kind of look at it as it was what was handed to us,” she said after Tuesday’s non-counting game against GSL foe Ferris. “You have to adapt to it and do what you can. It’s not going to change.”

So just what was handed to the coaches? After two years of a criticized two-division format in the 14-school GSL, the league has changed to a 13-game league season, each school playing everyone else once, with the best record winning the league title.

In the two-division model, the GSL schools played each division foe twice (12 games) and everyone in the opposite division once (seven games). That meant the league contests used all but one of the WIAA’s allotted 20 regular-season games, leaving just a single opening for a non-league game.

Most of the GSL’s coaches wanted more non-league games, allowing the better teams to face the state’s – and in some cases, the nation’s – best competition and the poorer teams a chance to find competition of a similar skill level. A 13-game league schedule allows those goals to be reached.

But some administrators and coaches felt scheduling seven non-league contests would be tough. Others invoked the past, citing the GSL’s tradition of playing at least 18 league games since 1978. A compromise was reached: 13 league games, two “true” non-league games and five games against GSL opponents scheduled by the league.

“Let’s be honest about it,” North Central girls coach Dave Hall said. “We are not playing non-league games. They are non-counting league games.”

Hall’s right. The five non-counters, which will end Monday, are league games when it comes to statistics. They are league games when it comes to the competitive juices. They are league games when it comes to admission prices. According to the league’s athletic directors, they have the same attendance as league games. They just don’t decide anything.

That’s what bothers many coaches.

“Right now we are 3-0 against the other 3A schools,” East Valley girls coach Freddie Rehkow said Tuesday prior to a loss to undefeated NC, another 3A school “and it doesn’t get us anywhere.”

Rehkow and Hall said the 3A coaches voted to play the other 3A schools twice, home and away, and count all eight games.

But the suggestion wasn’t accepted, and although the 3A schools are playing each other twice, only four of the games will figure in the final standings – and a possible playoff spot.

“With all things being equal, say everyone plays the same against the 4A schools, our season comes down to four games,” an impassioned Hall said. “In a perfect world the league would be divided 7-7 (between 4A and 3A schools). We’re not that far away.”

But would it change things? Probably not. The GSL, despite the addition of the three 3A schools two years ago and the expansion of two more this year, is the big-school league in the area.

It has tradition. It has prestige. It has playoff berths to protect (with the 3A expansion, the league is losing a 4A playoff spot next year).

Besides, in two years the WIAA formula that divides schools into classifications is going to change. A new GSL will probably be in the offing.

Once again, we will have a new experience for everyone.