Photos
Aberdeen High School will leave the 2A Evergreen Conference to join the 2A Greater St. Helens League in football only for the next two seasons starting this fall.
Aberdeen athletic director Ken Ashlock said the move was unanimously approved by athletic directors of the 2A GSHL Wednesday, which makes the EvCo a six-team league (Black Hills, soon-to-be Capital, Centralia, River Ridge, Tumwater and W.F. West) in football only. Aberdeen will remain in the EvCo for all remaining sports.
Ashlock said players’ safety was the main concern when school officials began looking at other options for the Bobcats' football program following the end of their 2011 season in late October. The youthful and inexperienced Bobcats went 1-9 this past fall, and had 17 players with season-ending injuries, Ashlock said. They also had multiple players who needed to be taken to the hospital on different occasions, including two players in Aberdeen’s 21-14 loss to River Ridge on Oct. 7.
“We looked for a way to give our athletes an opportunity to compete,” Ashlock said. “We can’t compete in (the EvCo) where we are with our kids right now. They're bigger, faster, and stronger than us. We just don’t have athletes to compete there."
Another option district officials looked at was the football team becoming an independent, Ashlock said. He also noted the move to the 2A GSHL for football will cost the district an extra $1,000 in travel expenses. The Bobcats’ closest competitors are the Longview schools – R.A. Long and Mark Morris – which are approximately 100 miles away.
Aberdeen plans to rejoin the EvCo in football starting in 2014, Ashlock said.
“They need to take care of their kids first. That’s No. 1,” said Scott Chamberlain, the EvCo’s football commissioner and W.F. West’s athletic director. “I think it was allowed for the right reasons.”
With the departure of Aberdeen for the next two seasons, that means Black Hills, soon-to-be Capital, Centralia, River Ridge, Tumwater and W.F. West will make up the six-team EvCo in football. Each team will play five league games and four nonleague games. North Thurston recently was reclassified as a 3A school for the next two years, and will depart the EvCo to join the 3A Narrows League.
In the past two years, District IV has received five playoff berths in football – three for the EvCo and two for the 2A GSHL – when the EvCo was a seven-team league and the 2A GSHL had five teams. Chamberlain said District IV’s playoff berths won’t be decided until the middle of the fall when the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association finalizes each district’s number of playoff berths.
“I think we (the EvCo) would assume we would get three (playoff berths),” Chamberlain said. “We won’t know for sure.”
