By Pat Jenkins
The Dispatch
Eatonville High School will be in one of three divisions when the 2A South Puget Sound League realigns next fall for all sports except football.
When the 2018-19 school year begins, the Cruisers will be in a division that includes all of the league’s schools that are in Pierce County. Orting, Franklin Pierce, Washington and White River are the others.
But divisions for football will remain the same as they were last season. That means Eatonville’s league matchups on the gridiron will be River Ridge, Orting, Clover Park, Highline, Renton and Steilacoom. For all other sports, the Cruisers will compete in the new division.
The change was agreed upon by principals of 2A SPSL schools in an effort to reduce the amount of travel for member schools to the home venues of fellow division members.
The league, which has schools in three counties (Pierce, King and Thurston), will stay with its current two-division setup through the rest of this school year. Eatonville has been part of the Sound Division, which includes schools as far north as Burien (Highline) and as far south as the Olympia area (River Ridge).
Reorganizing into three divisions has schools closer to each other geographically. In football, schools play each other once a season. In other sports, they have multiple contests against each other.
Besides the lineup that includes Eatonville, the other new divisions will lump River Ridge, Clover Park, Fife, Foss and Steilacoom in one, and Evergreen, Foster, Highline, Lindbergh, Renton and Tyee – all King County schools -- in another.
Eatonville joined the SPSL in the 2016-17 school year in a move spurred by Eatonville’s student enrollment increase from 1A to 2A status. The move from their previous conference, the Evergreen League, also put the Cruisers in a group more closely bunched geographically than in the Evergreen.
The Cruisers were in the SPSL during the 2010-12 seasons when they had 2A standing before dropping down to 1A and joining the Evergreen League.
Eatonville has been something of a vagabond in its league affiliations since 2010. That year, the Cruisers left the Nisqually League to join the SPSL, then returned to the Nisqually for the 2012-13 school year in order to compete against schools closer in size.
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