Wiaa May Have Dropped The Ball On This One

The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association double-dribbled.

Only in this case, no official made the call.

It appears that, at worst, the WAIA doesn’t know the rules. At best, it doesn’t know how to interpret them.

When pairings were drawn for the girls State AAA basketball tournament on Sunday at the WIAA office in Bellevue, third-ranked Mead was paired against top-ranked Prairie.

How, Mead coach Jeanne Helfer wondered, could that happen? She was curious if the rules for the draw, which bar two top-seeded teams out of qualifying tournaments to play each other, have been changed.

True, Mead qualified second out of the Eastern Regional in Richland after losing the championship game to Kamiakin. But in the past - everyone east of the Cascades thought - both teams were considered No. 1 seeds because the Greater Spokane League and Big Nine Conference combined their state tournament allocations.

Once Helfer learned no changes had been made, she was angry. Mead athletic director John Miller was even angrier.

Particularly frustrating for Helfer was the fact that she had told her team the Kamiakin game was basically meaningless. Then along came Prairie.

“We were told in the regional we were a No. 1 seed, no matter what happened,” she said. “Then we came over here and that was not the case. I kind of feel we’ve been cheated a little bit because of this.”

Apparently, say officials of the WIAA, there has never been an “always No. 1” deal for the No. 2 from the East Side.

“We had no understanding there was an agreement there would be two No. 1s (from the east),” WIAA executive director Mike Colbrese said. “We saw it as a tournament sending one, two and three seeds to the state tournament.”

The draw procedure states, if there are fewer than eight No. 1 seeds (there are four in Class AAA), then the No. 2s from the larger districts become No. 1s, opposite the true No. 1s. Then it states, “If there are fewer than eight No. 1 teams after the No. 2 teams have been added as No. 1 teams,” then the No. 3s out of the largest districts are placed as 1s.

What are we missing here? Or, more precisely, what is the WIAA missing? The “big” 3s are seeded after the 2s. Mead was a No. 2.

After dealing with obviously unhappy but “professional” Mead officials, Colbrese said, “It makes sense to me, once I think the whole thing out, the No. 2 seeds (from the east and southwest) should have been seeded higher than the No. 3 teams.”

The WIAA executive board will deal with the issue later this month. That’s too late for Mead, which adopted a “you have to beat the best to be the best” philosophy.

The Panthers didn’t, losing to Prairie 47-44 Wednesday at the Kingdome. Worse, the 10:30 a.m. starting time deprived many fans of a chance to see what could be the best game between the best teams.

Still, the WIAA won’t say it was wrong.

“At this point, I can’t determine if we made a mistake because I won’t really know until the board meets,” Colbrese said. “If I say we did it right and the board says it was wrong, we look bad. And, if I say we were wrong but the board doesn’t change it, we look bad again.

“If the board comes back and says ‘You did the draw wrong,’ I’ll apologize to Mead for that.”

Too late, you already missed the turnover.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Dave Trimmer The Spokesman-Review