SportsFebruary 12, 2004

The athletic director at Sunnyside High, host of the Class 3A Region 4 wrestling tournament Saturday, said qualifying criteria will remain unchanged despite protests by coaches at Clarkston and elsewhere.

Bill Daley said Wednesday the qualifying format in each eight-person weight class calls for a 4/4 split between the east and west sides of the state, and school administrators who could have challenged that arrangement never did so.

That runs counter to the remarks of Clarkston coach Dan Randles, who said he believed until last week the east side would receive five qualifiers.

Meanwhile, West Valley-Spokane athletic director Wayne McKnight traced the confusion to a change in Washington Interscholastic Activities Association policy.

According to McKnight, when the WIAA took control of regional tournaments last year, school administrators and coaches accepted the 4/4 split because they wrongly assumed they couldn't challenge it.

More recently, Daley has heard grievances from "numerous" sources who evidently believe a 5/3 allocation would be appropriate for a tournament that includes 11 schools from the east and eight from the west.

But "at this late date, we're not going to change the tournament format," Daley said.

Clarkston coaches, whose chances for a high state-meet placing would have been enhanced by a 5/3 format, recently suggested an addition to the regional bracket that would pit the No. 5 placer from the east and the No. 4 from the west.

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"This would have taken a maximum of 24 minutes and $48," Clarkston assistant coach Jim Holman said. "(Jim) Meyerhoff would not allow this."

He was referring to an assistant executive director at the WIAA. Meyerhoff, like Daley and McKnight, said the allocation for the 2004 tournament has always been 4/4.

Said McKnight, "In an ideal world, sure, we would have loved to have that fifth person. But in the reality of it, now, it didn't make any sense to disrupt everything."

Because of an imbalance in 3A schools in the state, the WIAA five years ago began sending a rotating set of sub-regional qualifiers into the Region 4 meet in the east. For the last two years, those qualifiers have come from the King Division of the Seamount League. A different league will be chosen for next year.

For a period that ended last year, the WIAA forfeited control of regional tournaments. McKnight said negotiations on allocation issues were common, and he suggested Randles' notion of a 5/3 ratio may stem from that phase. When the WIAA took control of regional tournaments, administrators and coaches assumed the 4/4 format would be beyond negotiation, he said. "Nobody even questioned it."

For future tournaments, "obviously our antennae will be up," he said.

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Grummert may be contacted at daleg@lmtribune.com

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