By Pat Jenkins The Dispatch Eatonville High School is changing leagues again, and its new base for interscholastic athletics will be an old one. When the 2016-17 school year starts in September, the Cruisers will be part of the 2A South Puget Sound league. The move to the 16-school, two-division alignment is spurred by an increase of Eatonville's student enrollment from 1A to 2A status. The schools will also be more closely bunched geographically than those in the Evergreen League, Eatonville's current conference. The Cruisers were in the SPSL during the 2010-12 seasons the last time they had 2A standing, and they "have established rivalries there,GÇ¥ said George Fairhart, Eatonville's athletic director and football coach. Other SPSL members who will be in the same division as Eatonville include Orting, River Ridge, Steilacoom, Clover Park, Highline, Renton and Tyee. Half of them (Eatonville, Orting, Steilacoom and Clover Park) are in Pierce County), three (Tyee, Renton and Highline) are in south King County, and one (Olympia's River Ridge) is in Thurston County. All of them are within a relatively short drive of each other. And that, from a logistical point of view, is an improvement for Eatonville over its experience the past two years in the 1A Evergreen League. That eight-school conference has schools in towns ranging from southwest Washington (Tenino, Montesano, Aberdeen, etc.) to the tip of the Olympic Peninsula (Forks). Before their Evergreen affiliation, the Cruisers were in the 1A Nisqually League, which also required some long road trips to Port Townsend and Chimacum on the peninsula. The other eight-school division of the revamped SPSL 2A starting this fall will have schools in King County (Evergreen of Seattle, Foster and Lindbergh) and Pierce County (Fife, Foss, Franklin Pierce, Washington and White River). SPSL officials have said a goal of the divisional orders is relatively equal travel distances between the schools. Eatonville has been something of a vagabond in its league affiliations since 2010. That year, the Cruisers left the Nisqually to join the SPSL, despite having a much smaller enrollment compared to other SPSL members, some of whom topped 1,000 students. Eatonville returned to the Nisqually for the 2012-13 school year in order to compete against schools closer in size. According to the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, the state's governing body of high school sports, 35 schools are moving up in classification next school year as a result of having higher enrollments. Eatonville, with an enrollment of 500-plus, is the only one moving from 1A to 2A. The largest classification switch has 22 schools opting up from 3A to 4A.
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