WIAA will add 6th classification

And then there were six.

The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association’s Representative Assembly on Friday at Auburn voted 32-3 to create a sixth classification in high school sports.

The new classification, which will be named by the WIAA’s Executive Board after the representatives decided not to go forward with the proposed C label, goes into effect starting in the fall of 2006.

Still to be decided, besides the classification’s name, is where its state basketball tournament will be held. The WIAA Executive Board will make that decision as well, though no timetable was set Friday.

However, at the Executive Board’s March meeting, a proposal was floated to have the B Tournament in Spokane the first week of state basketball tournaments and the C in Yakima the same week. No action was taken at that time.

“I still think Spokane will have a good tournament; I don’t worry about that,” said Dean Wagenaar, principal and boys basketball coach at Sunnyside Christian, winners of this year’s B title and a school headed to the new classification with 62 students. “Now will there be some tradition lost? Hey, I have parents that are just really sad because, initially we are going to stay down. But as an A.D., I still have to protect the other sports.”

The possibility of losing the traditional Spokane state tournament visit hits even harder in the Whitman County League, which may have as few as one school, Asotin, left in the B ranks.

“We went in and tried to tell them not to pass it,” said St. John-Endicott athletic director Bob Clements. “But we’re such a small amount of the schools, especially Whitman County, we only get one vote in that thing over there. We tried.

“For us, it’s been a B tradition. We hate to lose it. But things in society happen. We gave it our shot.”

The change, made at the assembly’s annual meeting at Emerald Downs, means the state’s high schools will be divided into one more classification, with the cutoff numbers determined by the schools’ average enrollments in grades 10 through 12. Once the cutoff numbers are established for 2006, they will remain in effect for eight years, though adjustments can be made every two years.

The Assembly decided last year to switch from dividing classifications by hard numbers – for example, the 82 schools with enrollments of 601 to 1,200 are in the 3A classification, the 50 between 301 and 600 are 2A – to a certain percentage of schools in each classification, regardless of where enrollment numbers fall. The change was made in an attempt to balance the classifications.

Friday’s vote means the smallest 16 percent of the schools will be in the new classification. The next largest 16 percent will be B schools, with 17 percent each from there in 1A, 2A, 3A and 4A. Schools will still be allowed to play in a larger class, or opt-up.

Using current enrollment figures, the smallest classification would contain schools with 83 or less students, the B would range from 84 to 177, 1A from 178 to 412, 2A from 413 to 891, 3A from 892 to 1,324 and 4A 1,325 and up.

“The impetus initially, was to just even out the classifications,” Wagenaar said. “And I’m going to be honest, we are a small school but we are not as small as some of the schools. And we’ve been blessed; basketball is something here that is a big deal.

“So, the people who have called me and asked me about it, I say, did we need a C? I don’t know if we necessarily needed a C, but I do think we needed to make the number of schools in B as compared to the other classifications a little more equitable. Now this proposal came up and it probably went a step further than I ever expected.”

If the 2006 B Tournament is the final one for many traditional powers, the motivation to make it to state will be even more intense.

“There will be incentive, even more so next year, to know that might be the last year the Bs are played in Spokane for us,” said Clements, who is also the school’s boys basketball coach. “That group of kids we have next year, their dads played in that tournament, so they know what its like.”