PORT TOWNSEND — Port Townsend High School’s athletic teams are staying put.
After months of trying to join the Nisqually League in all sports, Port Townsend will remain in the Olympic League through the 2013-14 athletic year, athletic director Patrick Kane said in an email.
Port Townsend’s football team competes in the Nisqually League, but the rest of its sports are members of the Olympic League.
Port Townsend’s enrollment places it with the 1A classification, but it has been competing in the Olympic League, a 2A league, because it requires less travel.
The Nisqually League is made up of 1A schools, including Chimacum.
Port Townsend hoped to join the Nisqually League for spring sports, and possibly before the 2013-14 athletic year, but after several appeals the school was denied entry into the league during the WIAA’s current two-year classification cycle.
The next classification cycle begins in 2014-15.
New postseason plan
The crux of Port Townsend’s desire to switch leagues mid-classification cycle — if not mid-school year — was entry to the postseason.
The postseason agreement for Port Townsend’s teams was modified before the winter sports playoffs earlier this month and the agreement will remain through the 2014 spring sports season.
Under the new plan, Port Townsend teams need to finish in seventh place or better in the Olympic League to qualify for a play-in game against a team from the Nisqually League.
Port Townsend’s boys and girls basketball teams both benefitted from the new agreement.
Both teams qualified and acquitted themselves well.
Each one their play-in game as well as a game in the subsequent 1A Tri-District
tournament.
