It should be
about the kids 

Karaoke isn't a WIAA sponsored activity, and it wasn't advertised on the SunDome marquees for Saturday night.

Yet there was a rousing rendition of the Freddie Mercury and Queen classic "We Are the Champions," in the center of the dome, performed by the Selah volleyball team and its coaches.

Yes, the Vikings were and are the champions of state volleyball, last year in the Class 3A ranks and this year at 2A, and they had every bit of their rocking, tearful celebration coming after a 3-0 defeat of Grandview.

Many, of course, felt that what Selah had coming was a postseason ban, as per a District 5 ruling that the team had played more than its allotted 16 varsity contests during the regular seasons.

The school's appeal to the WIAA's executive board was upheld, though, and ultimately restored some much-needed even-handedness to an issue that had boiled over with emotion.

Whatever the indiscretions, and regardless of who committed them, those who least deserved to be punished were Selah's players.

Kids, after all, are what all of this — education, athletics and all of the positive areas in which they interact — is supposed to be for.

Mike Colbrese, the WIAA's executive director, is among other things bright, reasonable and compassionate. And while the Viks and Greyhounds were warming up Saturday night he acknowledged that, yes, to have Selah kept from the evening's proceedings would have been wrong.

Not that he didn't think anyone within the school's administration hadn't erred, mind you. But examination of the WIAA's rules regarding what is a varsity contest and what isn't were, as Colbrese acknowledged, not clear enough to
determine whether they had been violated, let alone how severe a penalty such violation might warrant.

He said loopholes left by the present wording will hopefully be closed by reworking not only the maximum regular-season contest rule, but others.

"As an example," Colbrese said, "we figured that maybe 50 to 60 percent of the state's high schools might have academic standards for athletic participation that are more stringent than our own. We found out that 80 percent do, and it's because our scholastic regulations haven't been reviewed in 21 years."

So now they're going to be reviewed every three years, Colbrese said, and tweaked as circumstances warrant.

All of which should enable the WIAA to be a more effective governing body and to prevent the confusion, frustration and anger that followed the initial Selah ruling.

It's not like the WIAA, even in its present state, has no authority or fears the legal ramifications of imposing it.

But the Selah situation simply did not warrant the bottom-line penalty — banning a team from the postseason — which would primarily punish players who had nothing to do with what had transpired.

"If you're using an ineligible player," Colbrese said, "that player is in violation of a rule or rules and the other players are benefitting from that player's use."

In other words, ban teams that use ineligible players. They deserve it.

In the meantime, it doesn't get much better than state high school sports championship competition, especially when it involves the best two teams in a particular competition in a particular classification.

And especially when they're both from the Yakima Valley.

To have had only one of them playing Saturday night in the SunDome, then, would have been wrong.

So rock on, Selah Vikings. You have it coming.