Yakima Valley businesses, smaller schools up in arms
over WIAA's change in high school state basketball formats

A sign at the Howard Johnson in Yakima welcomes teams as they come into town earlier this week. Such signs are commonplace during the WIAA state tournaments in Yakima, no matter the season.   SARA GETTYS/Yakima Herald-Republic

The $150,000 is roughly how much in lost profits the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association was trying to recoup when it decided in April to reconfigure its state tournaments.

Until this year, Yakima held three separate tournaments, each lasting four days with 16 teams participating. Tacoma had two tournaments, and Spokane had one. This year, each city will hold two three-day, eight-team tournments March 3-5.

The changes have created a firestorm of criticism among the state's high school communities and the coaching fraternity, especially smaller schools,
which have looked forward to the four-day state-tourney trips to Yakima and
the SunDome.

And the effect will be felt by businesses.

Instead of nine nights of Yakima hotels, eateries and stores being filled with basketball fans spending as much as $7.5 million, it'll be two nights worth maybe $2.5 million.

"It's going to hurt the economy very bad in this town," said Gary Miner, part owner of Miner's Drive-In Restaurant, a popular pit stop with visiting teams.

"(The state tournaments) brought thousands of people and millions of dollars into this Valley, and it's going to have a major impact on our economy. People are going to feel it, especially the motel and restaurant industry, especially here we are in the winter months. I won't need (to hire) as much help. That's jobs lost."

All because of that $150,000.

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Established in 1905 to create equal sports competition among high schools, the nonprofit WIAA hosts and organizes 83 championship events annually.

But its tournaments for the largest schools -- Classes 4A and 3A -- have been hemorrhaging profits, their consolation-bracket games often played before nearly empty stands in the cavernous Tacoma Dome.

WIAA executive director Mike Colbrese believes the financial situation gave the association no choice but to reduce tournament expenses.

"Basketball is the big-ticket item," he said. "It pays for a lot of those activities that we either don't charge a dollar for or we don't make money."

Because proceeds from sports events make up three-quarters of its revenue, the WIAA depends on its tournaments to remain profitable, and the state basketball tournaments -- as the biggest revenue producer -- are the key. Last winter they generated $945,918 in revenue with a net profit of $326,597, nearly as much as the total net from state football, volleyball and wrestling combined.

But last winter's profit is nearly $150,000 less than what was netted on basketball tournaments in 2005-06.

Most of that downturn can be blamed equally on the 2006-07 creation of the 1B classification for the state's smallest schools, and on declining attendance at the Class 4A and 3A tournaments.

While the Class 1B tournament has been a financial boon to the Yakima Valley -- creating a third late-winter week of out-of-towners filling hotels and restaurants -- it has essentially doubled the WIAA's expenses in the Class B
ranks without doubling the revenue.

Roughly 28,000 fans attend Class B state-tourney games, the same as it was before, but now instead of one site, the WIAA is paying for two: the Spokane Arena for 2B and the SunDome for 1B. The difference in expenses is roughly
$70,000.

Meanwhile, the 3A and 4A tournaments have continued to draw fewer and fewer spectators over the past five seasons, generating $74,000 less in net profits for the WIAA than they did in 2006.

Together, those essentially make up the $150,000 downturn in net tournament profits.

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Even had tournament revenues not been dwindling, Colbrese said, the state's schools were already demanding that tournaments switch to three-day championship formats, and that would have happened two years down the line if not this year.

"We were getting pushed, and what the dollars did was push it faster," Colbrese said. "The association was continuing to get pressure from the member schools about the four-day event, that it was too expensive for the schools and kids were being out of school too long."

Colbrese said the only region in the state that wasn't generally in favor of the change was District 5: Yakima- and Tri-Cities-area schools. But an informal Herald-Republic survey of athletic directors, coaches, principals and superintendents at 101 schools around the state doesn't bear that out, with strongholds of opposition in both District 6 (north central Washington) and District 4 (southwest Washington).

Administrators at many smaller schools, especially those on the eastern side of the state, said the additional travel to far-flung regional sites ends up costing them more, not less, than the old four-day state-tourney trips.

Charlie Groth of Curlew said he had been in favor of the change until seeing the regional brackets.

"We could send our girls to Walla Walla and our boys to Mountlake Terrace" for regional-site games, said Groth, whose Class 1B District 7 school is more than a five-hour drive from each site. "That means double the transportation costs and, depending on the game times, probably extra lodging costs. If we have good teams that are fortunate enough to make it all the way to the final day, it will end up costing us a lot more."

"This doesn't save (schools) money," said athletic director Steve Chamberlin of Class 1A Okanogan. "I can speak for everybody in our league. There isn't anybody that wants this regional format and eight-team tournament."

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Many athletic directors and coaches say the new format was pushed through over their objections after, they say, WIAA officials publicly intimated for months that no major changes were coming in the near future.

"I've heard that, and those people are just looking for some kind of conspiracy that doesn't exist," Colbrese said, adding that as recently as last February WIAA staffers themselves didn't believe the change would happen this quickly.

"I've been pushing for years to push for this but the board wasn't ready," he said. "And lo and behold, the board said we need to make a change."

The change has raised a lot of hackles, particularly among smaller-school administrators.

"What frustrates me is I think somebody has gotten the wrong perception of the WIAA," Toutle Lake (Class 2B) athletic director Eric Swanson said. "My understanding is the WIAA works for schools, and it's supposed to be a bottom-up type of deal. To me, it's become a top-down, where it's the WIAA making decisions. It's not the schools having a voice.

"It's for the WIAA. That's exactly what it is."

Based on the WIAA's tax forms -- which are readily available online because of its nonprofit status -- the association annually receives roughly $1.1 million in membership fees from its nearly 400 member high schools (and about the same number of middle and junior high schools). The rest of its $4.2 million budget is generated by athletic championships and special events.

The WIAA annually spends about $3 million on program expenses and pays about $1.2 million annually in salaries and benefits. The highest-paid employee is Colbrese, who made $178,579 in 2008-09 after 6.5 percent increases in back-to-back years, according to the latest available WIAA tax records.

Colbrese's salary isn't out of line with others heading similar associations, especially considering his lengthy tenure. The average 2008-09 salary for his job in the 10 states closest to Washington's population was $168,504.

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Of the 121 coaches, athletic directors, principals and superintendents polled by the Herald-Republic -- representing schools in all classifications and all districts -- 56 said they would have preferred the formats to go unchanged; 31 favored the new format; and 26 wanted the large-classification schools go to the new format while letting the small schools keep their traditional four-day, 16-team tournaments. Eight said they'd take a wait-and-see attitude.

Of 23 coaches polled, only one liked the change. That's not surprising; the Washington Interscholastic Basketball Coaches Association issued a statement "in strong disagreement" with the changes. Association president Nalin Sood believes the new format penalizes the smaller classifications for large schools' failure to generate fan excitement about their teams.

"I don't like it one bit," said Sood, who is a boys basketball coach at Mountlake Terrace, one of the largest schools in the 3A classification. "What they should have done is change it for the big schools and not for the small schools. And (my) rationale is, you guys put yourself into this situation -- and by you guys, I mean ourselves, the 3A and 4A schools. That's on us."

The boys basketball coach and athletic director at one of those small schools, Class 1A Onalaska's Dennis Bower, said the new format gives his players less of a chance to reach final-eight play in Yakima, an experience he said they would remember for a lifetime.

"From a selfish standpoint, (the new format) limits the opportunity for us to get to state -- also, specifically of getting to Yakima," Bower said. "I think Yakima does the best job -- well, I know they do -- of hosting and putting on state tournaments. I grew up in Spokane, and the (Spokane) Coliseum and the B's were by far the best tournament. But Yakima has surpassed them, just by how the community of Yakima -- the hotels, the businesses, the restaurants, and the people at the dome -- how they take care of teams.

"I know for a fact that Yakima has really worked with the WIAA, in terms of lease agreements and the concessions and everything else, to help the WIAA be more profitable with the tournaments. Losing another weekend (of state
basketball) will adversely affect Yakima.

"And I feel bad for that."