In 25 years as a high school head football coach at five programs in two states, Battle Ground High coach Mike Woodward hopes the biggest loss of his coaching career doesn’t happen April 22.
Major cuts in Battle Ground Public Schools will have significant impacts on high school and middle school sports if voters reject the district’s Education Programs and Operations levy for a second time in three months.
Should its levy fail again April 22, the district anticipates eliminating $20.1 million in student programs, staffing and services beginning next school year. State law prevents districts from running levies a third time in the same calendar year.
For athletics, nearly $1 million in cuts is anticipated at its six middle schools and two comprehensive high schools, Battle Ground and Prairie. Without a levy, middle school sports would be axed and Battle Ground and Prairie would lose C-teams across all sports.
For Woodward, the Tigers’ coach since 2022 and a physical education teacher at his alma mater, a Class 4A football program without a C-team is a gut-wrenching notion.
“It would be devastating to our program,” the coach said. “I’m thinking positively, but it’s a scary, scary thought.”
According to BGPS, about 13 percent of its annual budget comes from levy dollars — money that helps close the gap between the state’s basic K-12 education funding and a district’s operating budget.
In February, Battle Ground voters rejected the EP&O replacement levy that would’ve raised $166.3 million over the next four years. The levy failed by just 60 votes out of more than 20,000 votes cast.
Battle Ground has a history of failed bond measures and levies. Since 1992, the district has suffered 12 levy failures. However, in 2021, a voter-approved EP&O levy brought back middle school sports for the first time since a 1982 double-levy failure eliminated middle school sports and student bus transportation.
Stephanie Watts, Prairie’s second-year athletic director and former principal, has watched what middle school sports’ three-year resurgence has done for students at Laurin and Pleasant Valley — Prairie’s direct feeders — and the difference-maker it’s been for Prairie.
The district offers boys and girls basketball, boys and girls soccer, cross country, track and field and volleyball at its six middle schools.
“When you think about how kids have grown athletically — just playing on a team when they normally would’ve maybe not played or just had to do (recreational) league out here,” she said. “We’ve seen a huge difference in just three years. … You can imagine if (middle school sports) goes away, I can’t even fathom it would come back.”
Watts estimates one-third of Prairie’s enrollment participate in athletics. Freshmen and sophomores typically make up a C-team roster and also serve as part of a program’s building block. She added a lack of C-teams will have a trickle-up effect.
“How are they going to create a program?” Watts said of her head coaches.
Battle Ground High is Southwest Washington’s fourth-largest high school with 1,843 students, according to fall enrollment numbers reported to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
While a smaller percentage of students participate in athletics compared to schools of similar size, the Tigers sport a high number of C-teams across fall, winter and spring sports. This spring, it includes baseball and softball.
Both Battle Ground and Prairie football programs boasted 100-plus players last fall.
Woodward said of Battle Grounds’ 107 players last season, 35 were freshmen. The highest freshmen class in his tenure is 42.
High school football typically is a no-cut sport, so without a C-team of mostly freshmen, lumping non-varsity freshmen onto the junior varsity roster isn’t that simple, the coach said. Physical maturity matters in football, and C-teams are critical for player development and program stability.
It’s a loss Woodward hopes doesn’t happen.
“There’s so many ramifications that can go into this,” he said.
