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Teams believe it’s better to forfeit than to play Archbishop Murphy football team

Commentary: Tim Martinez

By Tim Martinez, Columbian Assistant Sports Editor
Published: September 25, 2016, 6:45pm

Do you remember the movie War Games? In the movie, the super computer “Joshua” plays a simulation game of global thermonuclear war over and over until he concludes “Strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

Apparently, the opponents of the Archbishop Murphy football team have reached the same conclusion.

Archbishop Murphy is a Class 2A private school in Everett, and the Wildcats have a long tradition of success in football.

This season, that success may reach a new level.

The Wildcats opened the season against 4A Issaquah. The Wildcats won 73-0 (The halftime score was 73-0).

Then the Wildcats play 3A Bishop Blanchet, and won 59-0. Then they played 1A King’s, and won 38-0.

Last Friday, Archbishop Murphy didn’t play because the Wildcats’ opponent, South Whidbey, forfeited citing a shortage of players and a decided disadvantage of physical talent.

OK, it happens. South Whidbey, a 1A public school, is 0-3 this season and has been outscored by an average of 37-8.

But now the Wildcats won’t play this Friday because that opponent chose to forfeit. That opponent was Sultan, another 1A public school, and the Turks cited the same reasons as South Whidbey.

But Sultan is 4-0, and the Turks have outscored their opponents by an average of 43-15.

So you may ask “What gives?”

Well, apparently, the Turks don’t want to get squished by the Wildcats. Like, literally, squished.

“When you look at our football team thus far (this season), we’re having some success, but we’re very thin,” Sultan athletic director Scott Sifferman said. “I think we’re a decent (Class) 1A football team, but we do not have a lot of depth. In the typical flow of any game, we’re rotating in a lot of young, undersized kids … and by putting some of those kids on the field, we don’t match up well (against Archbishop Murphy) at all.”

Sultan has one player who comes in at 6-2, 285 pounds. The next biggest player is 235.

Archbishop Murphy has lineman who are 6-1/330, 6-6/310, 6-8/260, 5-11/288, 6-1/300, 6-3/265, and many of those players are on college recruit lists.

And now the Wildcats’ other three league rivals are thinking of taking the same route that South Whidbey and Sultan did.

Many people might play the “private schools should just be required to compete at 4A” card. But it’s not as simple as that.

Archbishop Murphy has a WIAA enrollment number of 403, which would place it in 1A. But the Wildcats are the only school in the state to opt-up into Class 2A. And based on the success of the entire athletic program, not just the football team, 2A has been a good fit for the Wildcats.

And while the football program has had success over the years, the success level is not Bellevue-like success.

Bellevue has reached the 3A state title game 13 times in the past 15 years, winning 11 titles. By comparison, Archbishop Murphy has made five 2A state title games in the past 14 years, winning twice. The Wildcats missed the state playoffs in 2013 and 2014 before losing in the semifinals last year.

What is really compounding the issue is the Wildcats play in a split-classification league, the Cascade Conference, with 2A schools Cedarcrest and Granite Falls and 1A schools Cedar Park Christian, King’s, South Whidbey and Sultan.

I’ve been covering prep sports in this state for 18 years, and the one thing that drives me bonkers is split-classification leagues.

The point of having a league is to group teams together that share a relative competitive balance. But too many schools in this state place a priority on travel convenience over competitive balance.

The net result sometimes is the situation you have with Archbishop Murphy football this season.

The officials of the Cascade Conference are discussing options to resolve this problem. That includes the long-term solution have having the Wildcats move to a different league. A short-term option that is being considered is to have Archbishop Murphy switch opponents week-to-week with other teams in the area that are expected to be losers in one-sided contests.

It’s a difficult situation. Archbishop Murphy wants to play games. Their league rivals don’t want to get squished.

And who can blame either one of them?

Tim Martinez is the assistant sports editor/prep coordinator for The Columbian. He can be reached at (360) 735-4538, tim.martinez@columbian.com or follow his Twitter handle @360TMart.

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