WIAA approves seeding committees for all sports for state tournaments
With the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association’s success moving toward a committee approach — made up of athletic directors and football coaches— to seeding state tournaments two years ago, the WIAA is now implementing seeding committees across all of the state’s sanctioned high school sports.
Except for football, the WIAA has been using an RPI (Rating Percentage Index) system for high school sports, a computer system that has had mixed results. Now, coaches and those with an intimate understanding of their leagues, sports and the state’s talent pool will have a chance to chime in and determine seeding for state tournaments.
“The feedback regarding the football seeding committees over the last two years definitely played a role in this expansion,” said WIAA information director Casey Johnson in a statement to The News Tribune. “The feedback from the membership, committee members and the general public regarding that process has been overwhelmingly positive. The RPI Committee, which is a group of athletic directors from around the state, has been evaluating the RPI and seeding process for basketball as well as all other team sports over the last few years.
“After gathering feedback from colleagues and looking at all of the information available, they made the recommendation to the WIAA Executive Board to move in this direction.”
The change will begin immediately in the 2020 fall season, affecting volleyball and girls soccer, in addition to football.
Committee members will be selected based on recommendations from recommendations at the league and district levels.
“Having the RPI committee in place allowed for a lot of information to be examined and a lot of voices to be heard in this process,” the WIAA’s statement continues. “Both that committee, and members of the WIAA staff, have spoken with leadership and coaches associations for each of the team sports to see for which team sports this would be welcomed. Again, I think seeing the success over the last two years with the football seeding committees provided a model for how this could work across the board and each of the sports groups were in favor of moving in this direction.”
RPI has been most controversial in basketball. From Tacoma, Foss was a No. 13 seed in 2017 when the Falcons won the Class 2A state title. O’Dea won the Class 3A state title in 2019 as a No. 11 seed.
In 2017, Foss’ RPI was negatively impacted by playing in a holiday tournament in California, in which the Falcons went 1-3 against top competition from Nevada and California.
“Just that 50 percent deal with the out of state thing, it really hurts you,” said Mike Cocke, the coach of that year’s Foss team, who now coaches at Wilson. “It makes people think once or twice about traveling. Bringing the human element into it, those things can be taken into consideration. We went to go play one of the top tournaments in California; there’s no reason we should’ve ever been 13th, especially at the 2A level.”
Now, out-of-state tournament results can be more accurately taken into account, as well as the absence of star players at any point during the season due to injury or ineligibility issues, or other explanations that RPI can’t take into account.
“I think it’s a great idea to use both (RPI and committees),” Cocke said. “The biggest thing, it’s going to make for a better tournament. It’s going to help the experience for the fans to not see four Metro (League) teams on one side of the bracket.”
The RPI will remain in place on the WIAA’s website as a resource and tool for seeding committees to use, but won’t have any bearing on state tournament seeding going forward.
In addition to moving forward with seeding committees, the WIAA Representative Assembly voted to pass 18 amendments, the Association announced Monday.
Among the amendments passed: a 30-second shot clock for both boys and girls basketball, allowing contact in only one of two-a-day workouts in football, and allowing volleyball programs to schedule 18 matches in a season.
Find the full list of approved amendments at wiaa.com.
This story was originally published May 12, 2020 at 1:33 PM.
