Saturday was a long day for Battle Ground athletic director Matt Stanfill — a long day of doing a whole lot of not much, if you believe Stanfill.
For the third consecutive season, Battle Ground was a host site of regional games of the state basketball tournament.
“This isn’t me,” Stanfill said looking around at Battle Ground’s gym. “This is all my staff’s doing — our team of volunteers, the ladies in our office. They make this happen. I just walk around trying to look imp—“
Stanfill’s sentence is broken by a question that comes through an earpiece he’s wearing. He steps aside, grabs the microphone attached to his shirt to answer the question and offer some direction.
Then he steps back to finish his thought. “So this is all their hard work, not mine.”
OK, Matt, if you say so.
Saturday featured five games back to back. The crowds were good, and the games were great. And Battle Ground put on its best face to offer a great atmosphere for high school basketball.
“It’s not the Tacoma Dome,” Stanfill said. “But we do whatever we can to make this experience the best we can for the teams and fans that come here.”
Stanfill and his staff have experience with putting on a high school showcase. Last month, for the first time, Battle Ground hosted the state cheerleading championships.
“That was such a great event, and we were happy to be able to host,” Stanfill said. “We are lucky enough to have one of the bigger high school gyms in the state. And we’ve hosted regional (cheerleading). So when the WIAA was looking for a site for state, they were able to see what we could offer from regionals.”
Cheer squads from more than 60 schools — and their supporters — descended upon Battle Ground for the all-day event.
“We really saw it as an opportunity to give back to our business partners who support us all year,” Stanfill said. “The event brought a lot of people to Battle Ground and provided a little economic boost. We even had food carts here to offer something special to our visitors.”
Buoyed by that success, Battle Ground is now under consideration as a potential site for state gymnastics next year.
Because of planned renovations, the Tacoma Dome Exhibition Hall, the traditional site of state gymnastics, won’t be available next year, and the WIAA is looking at alternate sites around the state. Battle Ground is on that list, along with the Clark County Events Center at the fairgrounds.
“We’ve hosted district gymnastics the past couple of years, so we have a system in place for hosting an event like that,” Stanfill said. “If it works out that we could bring state here, that would be great.”
In the meantime, Stanfill and his staff are keeping busy hosting basketball regional games for a third straight year. Prior to 2016, Clark County teams had to travel to Longview or Chehalis to play regional basketball games.
“That all started at a district meet a couple years ago,” Stanfill said. “The other athletic directors came to me and asked if they could submit Battle Ground as a potential host site. And I said ‘Sure.’
Battle Ground was one of 21 regional sites for 96 games statewide. Only seven sites hosted more games than the five Battle Ground hosted.
“We’ve been really happy with the turnout for these games,” Stanfill said during a break in one of the afternoon games. “It’s going to be crazy in here later tonight when Skyview and Union are playing.”
Saturday’s games started at noon, and the final game ended around 10 p.m. After cleaning up, Stanfill and his staff weren’t expected to depart until 11:30 p.m., ending a day of more than 12 hours after a long week of school. OK, Wednesday was a snow day, but still.
That’s a long day of standing around for Stanfill, all in the name of putting Battle Ground the prep sports map.
Tim Martinez is the assistant sports editor/prep editor for The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-735-4538, tim.martinez@columbian.com or follow him on Twitter @360TMart.
