New WIAA classifications shake up 1A ranks

By PAUL DELANEY

Cheney Free Press

CHENEY — Earthquakes are largely difficult to predict when and where they will occur.

But the tremors produced by revised high school sports classifications announced this week by the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association were expected, perhaps just not to what extent?

Rumored to happen for several months, the Northeast A League lost three of its seven teams, leaving the decades-old conference with some uncertainty.

Deer Park lost its appeal to stay a 1A school and will move up to the 2A division of the Greater Spokane League starting in the fall of 2024. Two other NEA schools, Freeman and Newport, will drop to the 2B ranks, their ultimate destination uncertain at this point.

Freeman and Newport may end up joining the Northeast 2B league, which includes Liberty (Spangle), Reardan, Colfax, Davenport, Northwest Christian, Lind-Ritzville/Sprague and others.

Medical Lake, Lakeside (Nine Mile Falls), Riverside (Chattaroy) and Colville are the surviving NEA members.

There is still significant uncertainty as to what 1A sports will look like when new seasons beginning the fall. Officials of both the NEA and the Caribou Trail League in north-central Washington will be meeting in the coming days to map the road forward.

The Caribou Trail League includes Omak, Chelan, Cashmere and Cascade (Leavenworth).

“The good news is, we finally know what the league looks like,” Medical Lake Athletics Director Dawn Eliassen wrote in an email.

There have been plenty of preliminary discussion on options, but no movement was possible until the enrollment classifications were finalized at a Jan. 21 meeting of the WIAA board.

NEA officials will meet Jan. 31 to address this.

One school not specifically affected by the changes is Cheney and its Greater Spokane League affiliation.

“We knew that we were going to be 3A,” Athletics Director Ken Ryan wrote in an email.

There was, however, some up and down movement within the multi-classification league.

Increased enrollment meant Ferris and Mead moved up to 4A from 3A while Central Valley drops from 4A to 3A. Shadle Park and North Central move up from 2A to 3A but NC will stay at 2A for football.

Among the smaller area schools, Davenport petitioned to drop to 1B, but that did not happen.

The new classifications cover a four-year period from 2024 to 2028 but schools can petition for changes at the midpoint of the cycle.