Lakewood quarterback Austin Lane (left) is tackled by Archbishop Murphy’s Ben Hines during a game this past season in Arlington.

Lakewood quarterback Austin Lane (left) is tackled by Archbishop Murphy’s Ben Hines during a game this past season in Arlington.

Level of competition was behind Lakewood High conference move

It’s been a busy couple of months for Lakewood High School athletic director Matt Blair.

As 2016 began, he was working to get the Cougars into a new football-only league that would include the 12 Class 2A teams from the Cascade Conference, the Northwest Conference and the Wesco South. By mid-January, the new league appeared to be a done deal.

Then it fell apart.

On Jan. 27, the principals of the eight Cascade Conference schools voted 5-3 not to join the new league. They wanted to preserve the Cascade Conference schedule and were concerned about Granite Falls, the smallest school in their conference. The Tigers barely qualified for the 2A classification and had made it known they were not in favor of joining the new football league.

It appeared the Cascade Conference — which includes Archbishop Murphy, Cedarcrest, Granite Falls, Cedar Park Christian-Bothell, King’s, South Whidbey, Sultan and Lakewood — would remain intact.

Then things got even more interesting.

After the football plan fell apart, Mike McKee, the athletic director at Lynden High School and a longtime friend of Blair’s, made it known that the Northwest Conference wanted Lakewood to join as its 14th full-fledged member.

That set off a two-week discussion in the Lakewood community about what was best for its student-athletes.

“There were some lacks of communication and gaps in the football thing,” Blair said. “Some thought it was a slam dunk, others didn’t want it to happen. It was kind of all over the place. We didn’t want that to happen with this. We covered all our bases.”

In the end, the Cougars decided to join the Northwest Conference after 12 years in the Cascade Conference. They begin play in the NWC this fall.

“They came to us and said, ‘We’d like to have Lakewood,’” Blair said. “… It kind of fell into place.”

Upping the competition

Blair said the level of competition in the Northwest Conference was a driving force behind the move. The conference has won 96 team state titles over the past 10 years — including seven of the past nine 2A football championships — and has won at least two state team championships in each sport over that span.

“It’s a very competitive atmosphere, from top to bottom,” Blair said. “That’s one of those things we looked at. … I’d been thinking about it for a couple years. I’ve talked to a few guys in the Cascade Conference about doing it down the road. I felt like the time was right.”

Other factors in the decision, Blair said, included the NWC’s passionate fan support, which should bolster Lakewood’s gate revenues; the ability of schools in the NWC to field C teams in some sports, which gets more athletes involved and builds greater depth; the potential to add programs such as boys tennis; and the precedent set by NWC members of similar size.

“We’re a smaller 2A,” Blair said. “We’re in the realm of a (NWC members) Lynden and Anacortes. But they find a way to compete. We’re not going to make excuses.”

Like the Cascade Conference, the Northwest Conference is comprised of schools from more than one classification. The NWC features two 3A schools, seven 2A schools (not counting Lakewood) and four 1A schools.

Travel was a concern, however. With 13 league games in most sports, Lakewood will face each opponent only once — and will play just the seven other 2A teams in the conference football schedule — rather than play a team at home and on the road as it does in the Cascade Conference.

“It’s slightly longer travel but, because there’s so many teams, you don’t travel to every team every year,” Blair said. “Softball, for instance, you might go to Lynden once. Then they’ll come here the next year. You’re not driving to Lynden every year.”

‘A good discussion’

Before accepting the Northwest Conference’s offer, Blair had to get feedback from his coaches. It was overwhelmingly positive.

“It was almost unanimous to make the switch,” Cougars football coach Dan Teeter said. “It was really widespread support. Overwhelmingly, we felt the benefits outweighed the concerns.”

Said boys track and field and cross country coach Jeff Sowards: “I think it was the right timing for all of our programs to look to be a part of the Northwest Conference. It didn’t come without a good discussion. It found great support here amongst our coaching staff. … The discussion was more than 90 percent positive and in favor of going north to compete. For scheduling purposes, we did need to move pretty quickly.”

“For me, it was a no-brainer to vote yes and go up there,” baseball coach Jacob Kon said. “At the end of the day, we’ve got to go through them (in the district playoffs) to get further down the road. We realized it may be rough at first when we get in there, but we feel like we can compete. I feel like in baseball, we’ll be competitive. It may take awhile to get up to their standards, but I think in most sports, we’ll be just fine.”

Lakewood’s coaches voted 13-1 to join the NWC.

The lone dissenting vote belonged to wrestling coach Tom O’Hara.

O’Hara said he doesn’t envision the change affecting his program that much — in fact, he said the new regional wrestling tournament may benefit his wrestlers — but he is worried that it might take Lakewood a while to get accustomed to the NWC’s high level of competition.

“My two cents on it is the change isn’t going to affect me that much,” O’Hara said. “… I’ll be fine. I don’t know how some of the other sports are going to be. I don’t necessarily buy that if we up the competition, we’re going to get better. The fact is, we’re at 500 kids walking in our hallway and a lot of them are at (800 or more). Then again, maybe we can start that type of heritage.”

Lakewood girls basketball and girls golf coach Chris Walster said his players are aware they have a daunting task ahead of them.

“It’s going to be very challenging. That’s what I keep telling the kids,” Walster said. “I think for some sports it might not have that big of impact, but I think for me in basketball, it’s going to be a big change. We’ve played a lot of non-conference games against the Northwest Conference and have not had a lot of success.”

The Lakewood girls basketball team went 3-1 in non-league games against teams from the NWC this season, including a victory over Sedro-Woolley in the district tournament. But, historically, that has not been the case.

Similarly, the girls golf team faces a tougher path to the postseason.

“For the most part, they’re not that excited,” Walster said. “… Right now in the Cascade Conference qualifying for (golf) district play, most of our girls will probably do it. Next year, that will probably be a different situation. Bellingham has won seven out of the last nine state championships. My basketball players know what it’s been like playing non-league games against those teams. They enjoyed the fact that this year was one of the years where we had a successful season. It will be a real test to see if we can make it to the district tournament next year.”

Convincing the school board

Once the coaches voted in favor of the move, the next step was to convince the members of the school board. Board members questioned Blair about the proposal, with McKee, Teeter and other coaches in attendance.

“They asked some really important question that showed the care and love they have for our students,” Blair said. “But they really put a lot of trust in us. They wanted to know exactly what this meant, the pros and the cons. … They asked a lot of questions that really led to, ‘Is this what’s best for our kids?’ And I really appreciate that. That was something that we didn’t anticipate being as thorough. When we walked out, I felt better about the move.”

McKee was impressed by the process.

“I think that their process, within their own community, was really good,” McKee said. “The school board asked great questions and were really on top of it. Coaches met multiple times to go over it. I think in a short window, they got an awful lot done to be sure this was a good move for them. They didn’t cut any corners.”

That night, Feb. 17, Lakewood voted to move to the Northwest Conference.

With the blessing of the school board, Blair filled out an application and the NWC’s 13 schools voted unanimously to bring the Cougars into the fold.

“We all have a great relationship amongst the ADs, but to have a unanimous vote on anything is very hard,” McKee said. “And 13-0 was the vote to have them come into our conference. Everyone was on board.”

The fallout

Lakewood’s departure left the Cascade Conference with seven members — three 2A schools and four 1A schools. The conference’s athletic directors reached out to other schools to bolster the league but, with schedules for fall sports needing to be finalized in March, they quickly discovered it was too late for any schools to move.

“One of the things that became very evident, both with our schools and the schools we talked to, it was too late in the game to change anything,” Sultan athletic director Scott Sifferman said. “We didn’t want to do that to another league, too.”

Mountlake Terrace, which had agreed to join the proposed 2A football league, was one school the Cascade Conference contacted, but the Hawks had their plan — to remain in the Wesco 3A South as a 2A team — already set.

“We reached out to them immediately but, in the immediate fallout, it was one of the deals where the music stopped playing and everybody needs to grab a chair,” Sifferman said. “They needed to make a decision quick when that … football league fell through and they made a decision to continue playing football in Wesco.”

The Cascade Conference plans to go on with seven teams next year and hopes to add at least one more member for the 2017-18 school year. However, Sifferman — who said he “was not aware of (Lakewood’s departure) until it happened” — isn’t sure how easy it will be to get another team to join the conference in the middle of a two-year classification cycle.

“Our constitution has a process for new schools to apply to join the league. They need to get applications in by December,” Sifferman said. “It might be toughest to have a team join us the middle of a two-year cycle for football. But I think there are some things that we could work around.

“Who knows? Maybe there’s a few more schools who would want to join.”

‘A win-win’

Based on enrollment figures released by the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, Lakewood will be the second-smallest 2A school in the Northwest Conference, with 532.13 students. (The figures are the average enrollment for grades 9-11 as reported to the Office of Public Instruction for the months of January, February, March, April, May, October and November). Only Blaine (484.13) is smaller.

Sedro-Woolley (910.25), Sehome (867.13), Burlington-Edison (840.38), Bellingham (760.11), Lynden (601.75) and Anacortes (595.88) all have higher enrollments than Lakewood, which would rank as the second-largest 2A school in the Cascade Conference behind Cedarcrest (716.00) and ahead of Granite Falls (461.25). Granite Falls was at the cutoff point for 2A and was just .12 students away from being a 1A school. Archbishop Murphy (403.63) opted up to 2A.

While the commitment is for a two-year cycle, Blair said he hopes Lakewood will continue to be a member of the NWC for the foreseeable future.

O’Hara said he hopes to evaluate the move in a few years.

“I told the coaches, ‘Four years from now I want to have the same conversation and see how great you’re doing, how great our programs are,’” O’Hara said. “See if they still feel the same way.”

Blair would like to find a way to help Lakewood fill part of its non-league schedules with Cascade Conference members.

“We’d like to stay connected, in a lot of ways, to the Cascade Conference,” Blair said. “We had an opportunity to raise the bar, in some ways, and challenge our kids. To put them in a conference that’s competitive in every sport. We’ve loved being in the Cascade Conference and there are a lot of great teams in the Cascade Conference, but this is a great opportunity.

“I have a lot of allegiance to the Cascade Conference teams, but No. 1 on my list is Lakewood and my community and my kids. We’re content with our decision and we’re excited to be part of the Northwest Conference. We wish the Cascade Conference the best of luck and we’ll be seeing them in the postseason.”

Like the Cougars, the 13 other Northwest Conference members are excited about the change.

“We think that they’re going to come in and their programs are going to be very competitive,” McKee said. “It’s going to raise the bar for everyone.

“It’s a win-win.”

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