Coupeville Sports

You too can be the #1 ranked team in the land, without actually playing the games.

When the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association releases its RPI rankings, it wants us to take them seriously.

And they do have an impact on more than just starting arguments.

When the state playoffs roll around, the RPI rankings are one of the things taken into consideration when teams are seeded for the big dance.

Playing deep on the road as a lower seed or getting to travel just down the street as a top-level seed, matters.

Just ask Coupeville High School boys’ basketball, which, two years ago, qualified for state while boasting a 16-0 mark, yet was sent 214 miles away to Battle Ground, while Kalama traveled just 25 for the state tourney opener.

RPI ranking likely dinged the Wolves, who still showed up and showed out, pushing the defending state champs to the final seconds in a five-point loss.

Jump forward to 2024, and CHS, which is 7-2 on the current season, sits #10 in the WIAA’s RPI rankings for 2B teams as of Wednesday morning.

Like it? Sure.

Trust it? Eh…

That’s because on the same day, the RPI currently has a boys’ basketball team ranked #1 in 1B which doesn’t seem to actually exist.

At least not this season.

For pushing three weeks now, the WIAA has listed Pacific Christian Academy, a small private school out of Federal Way, as being a perfect 1-0, boasting a 79-65 win on Dec. 15 over South Eugene High School.

A victory the Eagles never collected, as a little research shows that the team bringing home the W that night was actually Pacifica Christian/Orange County out of Newport Beach, California.

That squad is 10-8.

So, someone got two schools with similar names mixed up. Easy to do.

We’ll just go check and see how our Pacific Christian team, the one located in Washington state, is doing and … they don’t seem to have an active team this year.

At all.

The Eagles have a girls’ basketball team listed, with a three-game schedule, but that team hasn’t played a contest yet.

The boys’ hoops program? Not listed at all on the school’s website when you click through on the link offered by the WIAA.

There’s volleyball, girls’ basketball, and boys and girls track and field and that’s it.

Now, Pacific Christian (the one here in Washington) is a small school, academically strong, and likely doing its best to create opportunities for its student/athletes. No disrespect meant to the Eagles.

But the bigger question remains — how keenly is the WIAA monitoring its own rankings when it lets stuff like this linger for three weeks?

While most 1B boys’ basketball teams have played between 8-10 games, only two of 76 — Pacific Christian Academy and Chief Kitsap Academy — are listed with just one result.

CKA lost that game, legitimately it appears, 59-28 to Crosspoint, and is ranked dead last in the RPI.

Did no one think to question why #2 ranked Cusick sits at 8-0 and #3 Lummi Nation at 8-1, while the supposed top dogs sat quiet?

Was no one going to notice this until the state seeding committee sat down in February to do its business, and then, after a lot of back-patting and grazing through the fancy sandwiches provided to fuel all the hard work, suddenly noticed a fly in the ointment?

“Um, guys, gals, where is our #1 team? It didn’t qualify for state?? What do you mean it doesn’t exist???”

So, WIAA bigwigs, maybe step away from the cucumber sandwiches and get back to your number-crunching.

Because for now, it sure sounds like teams such as Coupeville could improve their RPI rankings by simply not playing any games.

And where’s the fun in that?

UPDATE: Three weeks with a sham #1, but two hours after this article hit the internet, Cusick — a real team playing real games — has been elevated to the top of the 1B rankings, where it always belonged.