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Medical Lake loses out—this time |
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Thursday, 04 February 2010 |
Starting in the fall of 2010, Medical Lake High School had hoped to be a Class 1A member.
But late last month at Washington Interscholastic Activities Association headquarters in Renton, ML’s reclassification appeal was turned down.
Medical Lake will remain a member of the Great Northern 2A League for at least the next two-year classification cycle, but football will apparently take a different approach, according to a story that appeared in last week’s Cheney Free Press.
The page one story, written by staff reporter Paul Delaney, says that ML will opt out of playing football in the GNL and will go to an “independent” schedule
Other sports at Medical Lake High School will stay in the GNL scheduling rota, according to MLHS athletic director, Chris Spring.
The school found out that under WIAA rules, they could take the independent approach with individual sports and didn’t have to “go independent” across the board.
According to the WIAA, Medical Lake would be the only school in Washington state that would play as an independent.
The Fairchild Factor
ML’s appeal to the WIAA was based on continuing declining enrollment based on what Spring referred to as “military privatization” as Fairchild Air Force Base extricates itself from the housing business.
Now that Fairchild is no longer a bomber base, families with students in the Medical Lake School District are able to determine where they want to live within a 50-minute commute of the base.
The appeal to the WIAA also discussed the fact that district officials wanted to have its alternative and Running Start students counted as part of the classification process.
The current ML enrollment is 515 students. Projected enrollment in 2011 is expected to be around 500 students, well within the parameters of class 1A status.
Football is the biggest issue at present in the Medical Lake School District, Spring told the Free Press.
”It’s not about wins and losses, it’s about sending kids to the hospital,” Spring said. “For us, we’ve got to protect our athletes.”
Spring said that adding former 3A East Valley to the GNL next fall was an issue in the school’s appeal.
“We’re not complaining about playing Pullman and we’re not complaining about playing Deer Park,” he said. “I think the East Valley thing really sent us over the edge here. All of a sudden, you bring in a school that is more than twice our size.”
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 09 February 2010 )
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