Wolf freshman Tiffany Briscoe and teammates will move into a new league next season. (John Fisken photos)
CHS Athletic Director Lori Stolee (left) worked behind the scenes to find the Wolves a true 1A league.
Things are about to get a lot more competitive.
Coupeville High School Athletic Director Lori Stolee confirmed Monday that the school will leave its current league, the 1A/2A Cascade Conference, in the fall.
When the 2014-2015 school year kicks off in September, CHS, the smallest 1A school in the state, will join Port Townsend, Chimacum and Klahowya in a new four-team 1A division in the Olympic League.
The state re-classifies schools every two years, and Coupeville missed out on dropping to 2B, and possibly returning to its old stomping grounds in the Northwest League, by one-tenth of a student.
With that door closed, school officials moved forward when they were approached by the other three 1A schools, who were interested in pulling together a new league of comparatively-sized schools who would have limited travel.
While the Wolves will still be the smallest school, with 225 students currently in grades 9-11, the move will greatly reduce the size difference that Coupeville has faced in its current conference.
Chimacum has 237 students, Port Townsend 327 and Klahowya, which is located in Silverdale, has 455. The Eagles are dropping from 2A to 1A under the next two-year classification count.
In the Cascade Conference, the next-smallest schools — 1A King’s and 2A Archbishop Thomas Murphy, private schools that can award scholarships — sat at 368 and 369 students.
2A schools Cedarcrest (691), Lakewood (554) and Granite Falls (491) were all double the size of Coupeville, while Sultan (428), which will drop to 1A next year, and 1A South Whidbey (398) weren’t far off.
The sport most affected by the size difference has been football, and a temporary agreement to allow CHS to skip playing Cedarcrest, Lakewood and ATM the past two years was about to run out.
That would have meant returning to sending a 30-man roster dotted with undersized freshmen against schools that field varsity teams of 60-70 players filled primarily with weight room-tested junior and seniors.
“Couldn’t be happier. It is what is best for the kids,” said Wolf football coach Tony Maggio. “We should at least be able to compete in the Olympic League, and, for the most part, play teams close to our size.
“I think most the coaches were on board with the switch.”
The move will take Coupeville out of District 1 and move it to District 3. Scheduling is still being worked out, but, with four teams, the Olympic League would be guaranteed a postseason berth for each sport.
While nothing it set in stone, it’s believed football, volleyball and soccer will play each new league school twice a season, while baseball, softball and basketball will face off three times each.
Schedules can be filled in with many of the same non-conference 1A or B foes Coupeville currently faces, such as Meridian, Nooksack Valley, Friday Harbor and Mount Vernon Christian.
If the Wolves face a 2A school, either from the 2A division of the Olympic League or somewhere else, it will be the exception instead of the rule going forward.
Those games would also no longer affect Coupeville’s efforts to make the playoffs.
Stolee said she hopes to continue to schedule games with South Whidbey to keep the Island rivalry strong.
CHS baseball coach, and former Athletic Director, Willie Smith is one of many on board with the move.
“Well, I am actually excited for the change,” he said. “It will, of course, present some challenges with scheduling, but from the time I was the AD until now, I have advocated for a 1A league.
“Competitively, I think we will do well,” he added. “Klahowya is a bit of an unknown, but Chimacum and Port Townsend are both comparable to us in size of programs, so it should be a good fit.”
Regardless of which league Coupeville calls home, the Wolves also need to continue to build athletes from the ground up if they wish to add new league title banners to a gym wall that has not seen any new additions in the last decade.
“We will need to do a better job of getting our feeder programs back on track,” Smith said. “But we would need to do that whether we were in the Cascade, 2B, or in any other league.
“I think we’ve put ourselves in a very good situation now,” he added. “If we lay the foundation for our programs, we can be successful once again.”
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