This year's 1B tournament would seem to be much more intriguing than the 2007 event, in which it seemed to be a foregone conclusion that Sunnyside Christian's boys and Sprague-Harrington's girls would romp to their titles (which they did).

This year, both fields are wide open, and yet the attendance figures are down. Last year's first-day attendance, provided by the WIAA, was 2,552; this year's was 2,224. Single-day tickets were down about 100, and all-tourney tickets down more than 200.

One possible reason? Gas prices, which have gone up roughly 80 cents per gallon in the state over the last year. Another could be the Presidents Day holiday falling within the same week as the tournament; some spectator wannabes might not be able to get away from their jobs in an already shortened work week.

It may also have something to do with this year's number of even-tinier-than-before 1B communities. At least six of the school's towns — including North River from virtually nonexistent Brooklyn — have fewer than 500 residents.

Which, of course, makes them exactly why the 1B classification was created.

ANYBODY HOME? It's been 41 years since the Klickitat boys' last trip to state, and the school administration is trying to make sure its students get to enjoy the experience. As such, Klickitat High was a virtual ghost school on Thursday.

"Our ASB has voted to buy the tickets for the kids to get in, and our district is paying for the transportation and one meal for every student who comes on the rooter bus," Klickitat athletic director Yvette Schultz said.

The school has an enrollment of about 50, and Thursday's rooter bus had 28 riders. When you figure in the players and cheerleaders who were already here, that didn't leave much back at home.

"I just called the staff," Schultz said with a grin, "and there's 12 kids in class today."

HEAD EAST, YOUNG MAN: That's what Zane Wells did. The former athletic director at Grandview showed up at the SunDome this week sporting different school colors — that of Garfield-Palouse, where he's an assistant coach.

Why the change? Well, his wife, Kimber, graduated from Gar-Pal, and so Wells accepted a position as principal at the district's middle/elementary school.

"It's been a great change. Well, other than the winter weather, it's been great," Wells said, a reference to the heavy snows in the southeastern part of the state this year. "I thought my house was going to cave in."

LOOK BOTH WAYS: When Lummi's boys and girls teams both lost on Wednesday and then both won on Thursday, it put the tournament committee into a scheduling conundrum. Both Lummi teams would be scheduled to play loser-out, winner-clinches-a-trophy games at 10:30 a.m., the boys against Cusick and the girls against North Sound Christian.

That often means juggling the schedule, always a problematic issue in terms of contacting everybody and making sure fans aren't showing up at the wrong time. When it became apparent that moving it might entail having to change every game in the consolation bracket, though, the Lummi administration made it easy by saying, essentially: Keep the games there, our people will just move higher up in the stands and watch them both.

SHORT SHOTS: Most misleading high-scoring performance of the girls' second day? Easy: The 25 points of LAKE QUINAULT sophomore CARLY SANSOM, who earned them by launching a jaw-dropping 32 3-pointers. She was 1-for-13 on treys at halftime, but kept right on firing away. She did heat up a tad in the second half, but still finished 7-for-32 on those bombs. By the way, the Elks lost. ... Thursday's weird stat from the boys: In a loser-out game, LUMMI didn't score a field goal in the first quarter against KLICKITAT, which answered by not scoring one in the second.

DEREK STRATTON of LIBERTY CHRISTIAN apparently got over the kind of "dome vision" that affects so many shooters on their first day in the SunDome. After going 5-for-17 in Friday's loss to ENTIAT, the Patriot junior stepped up big-time on day two, going 5-for-8, scoring 12 points and pulling down a game-high 13 rebounds. ... After winning Wednesday, GAR-PAL's were 13-1 in opening-round games. ...

JORDAN SMITH, the LOPEZ senior came in averaging 35 points per game and scored barely more than that, 37, over the Lobos' two defeats this week, shooting just 13-for-41 from the field. Part of that was the depth-perception woes that affect many first-time SunDome shooters — "Everything we shot was coming up short," noted LOPEZ coach BRAD SMITH, Jordan's father. But Jordan was probably also pretty gassed; he has asthma that tends to kick in pretty badly at this time of year, and he was doing some pretty coughing even before Thursday's game began.