On Thursday, Jan. 14th, the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) formally announced that Mountlake Terrace, a school that’s been in the 3A division for quite some time, will move down to 2A for football, while Shorecrest will move up into the 3A division.
According to athletics and activities director Kim Stewart, MTHS football will be placed in a 2A 12-team league divided into two six-team divisions. The traditionally strong teams will be evened out within the two divisions and the rest of the teams will be drawn randomly and placed in either division.
“This way with the drawing system, things will be a lot more even,” Stewart said. “You won’t have that whole north-south issue as well, as the divisions will be evenly distributed and balanced.”
According to Stewart, MTHS will be joining Archbishop-Murphy, Blaine, Sehome, Bellingham, Cedarcrest, Granite Falls, Lakewood, Burlington-Edison, Sedro-Wooley, Lyndon and Anacortes within that 12-team league.
Stewart confirmed that no other 3A school moved down with us, so we will no longer be able to play any of the 3A teams that MTHS is used to playing such as Lynnwood, Meadowdale, Edmonds-Woodway, etc.
The football department is the only MTHS sport transitioning to playing 2A teams. This is because it has been affected the most by the disadvantage of being small for our league, which results in way fewer supporters in the stands as well as fewer bodies on the teams than the other 3A schools, Stewart said.
All of the other sports will do what schools like Shorecrest of the past did where they would be in the 2A division but still play all of the 3A schools within those sports.
“The good thing out of this is that we will be competing with other schools that are the same size as us,” Stewart said. “I mean look at the Stanwood-MTHS crossover game. They had 75 kids while we only had about 24. Instead of being at the bottom, we’ll now be at the top.”
This transition to 2A was decided by the Office of Public Instruction (OSPI), which bases the division classification off of the enrollment numbers of students grades nine through 11, specifically during the months of January through May and October through November.
