Playing nice with small schools, WIAA missing bigger picture

Q: What's your opinion of the WIAA scheduling the Class 3A football semifinal games at 9 a.m. on Friday and Saturday at the Tacoma Dome? Bellevue will play O'Dea on Friday and Franklin Pierce will face Skyline on Saturday.

A: What we are seeing here is a lack of both common sense and business sense plus an athletic version of political correctness run amok.

It also is a huge disservice to a majority of fans.

The scheduling crunch exists because the WIAA is going to play 10 semifinal games — five per day — at the Tacoma Dome. That doesn't bother me. The scheduling does.

The WIAA explanation for 9 a.m. kickoffs for the high-interest 3A games is that they are the only ones that don't pit a Western Washington against an Eastern Washington team. By playing the 3A games at 9 a.m., Eastern Washington teams have the choice of whether they want to spend money for hotel rooms.

Smell the coffee, WIAA. Your biggest potential crowds are for the 3A games. Granted, Edmonds-Woodway will bring a throng to the 4A game at 8 p.m. Saturday against Lewis and Clark of Spokane, but LC won't.

Gate receipts help fund state tournaments in all sports. The last time I checked, only football and basketball were guaranteed moneymakers.

The WIAA is always reluctant to make one classification appear more important than another.

I can buy the argument that all classifications are equally important, but I'm not naïve enough to pretend that fan interest in them is equal.

There is more interest in 3A and 4A (and since reclassification, I'll throw in 2A) than other classifications because they are bigger schools. They have more supporters and are more appealing to the casual fan because of the quality of play.

If I ruled the semifinals, each day would start with the smallest-classification game and proceed through the ranks to the highest. I'd also help the small schools in the opening games each day with hotel expenses with money resulting from bigger crowds at the marquee 3A and 4A games.

So next year, WIAA, don't be so polite. Forget about being so accommodating to small towns and try to accommodate fans. Put more fannies in seats and bring in more revenue to support all sports. Pretend for a day that you are a business.

Q: I notice that soccer season for boys in the combined 2B/1B classification is in the fall, while the boys soccer season for other classifications is in the spring. Why? Do some schools field both soccer and football teams in the fall?

A: Soccer season in the combined 2B/1B classification is in the fall because many are small private schools that don't offer football.

The WIAA allows 2B and 1B schools that want to play soccer in the spring to "opt up" and play 1A soccer. About a half dozen schools in Eastern Washington exercise that option.

The 1A boys soccer season used to be in the fall. But when the new classification system went into effect in the fall of 2006, the season was moved to spring because that's when most of the newcomers to 1A had played soccer.

One Puget Sound area 2B school that offers both soccer and football in the fall is La Conner, which reached the state soccer quarterfinals.

Athletic director Glenn Springer said playing soccer in the fall "works best" because playing 1A soccer in the spring would deplete spring teams such as baseball.

Northwest Christian, from the Spokane-area community of Colbert, beat Shoreline Christian 3-0 for the 2B/1B boys soccer title.

Have a question about high-school sports? Craig Smith will find the answer every Tuesday in The Times. Ask your question in one of the following ways: Voice mail (206-464-8279), snail mail (Craig Smith, Seattle Times Sports, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111) or e-mail csmith@seattletimes.com