Thursday, Apr. 24, 2008

Revamped regionals give CBBN guaranteed state berth

By Rene Ferran, Herald staff writer

The Columbia Basin and Greater Spokane league athletic directors hammered out at their meeting Monday in Moses Lake the formats for the regional tournaments beginning next year, when reclassification revamps the 4A/3A athletic maps.

The CBL athletic directors also resolved a couple of lingering issues from when the principals met in February.

Beginning next year, the name of the league reverts to the Columbia Basin Big Nine Athletic Conference, and boy/girl basketball doubleheaders will be done by mutual consent rather than mandatory.

Next fall, the GSL will have only six 4A schools and five 3A schools, while the CBBN will have 11 4A and three 3A.

The 4A regional berths will be broken down so the CBBN always gets at least one state qualifier. The years the eastside gets three state berths, the CBBN will advance six entries to state and the GSL two; when there are four state berths, it's a 5-3 split.

In football, the splits are 4 CBBN-2 GSL with three state berths, and 5 CBBN-3 GSL with four state berths.

The 3A format will reverse the splits of the past few years, when the Mid-Valley and CBL have had more schools than the GSL.

The GSL will get four regional berths in most sports and the CBBN two -- the eastside is expected to get two state berths each year.

Statewide

The WIAA Representative Assembly will be held Friday in Renton, with 19 proposed amendments on the agenda for the 53 members to consider.

One would change how transfers between high schools in the same school district are handled, putting them under WIAA jurisdiction and requiring any that don't meet automatic criteria (such as a change in residence) to go to the WIAA district eligibility committee.

A student whose transfer isn't automatic or approved upon appeal would be ineligible for varsity competition for a year.

The amendment would not affect initial decisions by eighth-graders to attend a high school outside his/her boundaries within the same district. Those still would be handled at the school district level.

Other amendments of note include one that would revamp the opt-up process; one that would change the classification cycles from two to four years; one that would add girls lacrosse as a varsity sport; the "Archbishop Murphy rules" that would allow leagues the leeway not to penalize a team that used an ineligible player for an inadvertent clerical error; and one that would require member schools to honor other schools' eligibility decisions when a student transfers.

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