In 25 years as a highschool head soccer coach at 5 applications in two states, Battle Floor Excessive coach Mike Woodward hopes the largest lack of his teaching profession doesn’t occur April 22.
Main cuts in Battle Floor Public Faculties could have important impacts on highschool and center faculty sports activities if voters reject the district’s Training Applications and Operations levy for a second time in three months.
Ought to its levy fail once more April 22, the district anticipates eliminating $20.1 million in scholar applications, staffing and providers starting subsequent faculty yr. State regulation prevents districts from operating levies a 3rd time in the identical calendar yr.
For athletics, practically $1 million in cuts is anticipated at its six center colleges and two complete excessive colleges, Battle Floor and Prairie. With out a levy, center faculty sports activities could be axed and Battle Floor and Prairie would lose C-teams throughout all sports activities.
For Woodward, the Tigers’ coach since 2022 and a bodily training trainer at his alma mater, a Class 4A soccer program with no C-team is a gut-wrenching notion.
“It would be devastating to our program,” the coach stated. “I’m thinking positively, but it’s a scary, scary thought.”
In keeping with BGPS, about 13 % of its annual finances comes from levy {dollars} — cash that helps shut the hole between the state’s fundamental Okay-12 training funding and a district’s working finances.
In February, Battle Floor voters rejected the EP&O alternative levy that may’ve raised $166.3 million over the following 4 years. The levy failed by simply 60 votes out of greater than 20,000 votes forged.
Battle Floor has a historical past of failed bond measures and levies. Since 1992, the district has suffered 12 levy failures. Nonetheless, in 2021, a voter-approved EP&O levy introduced again center faculty sports activities for the primary time since a 1982 double-levy failure eradicated center faculty sports activities and scholar bus transportation.
Stephanie Watts, Prairie’s second-year athletic director and former principal, has watched what center faculty sports activities’ three-year resurgence has achieved for college students at Laurin and Nice Valley — Prairie’s direct feeders — and the difference-maker it’s been for Prairie.
The district provides girls and boys basketball, girls and boys soccer, cross nation, monitor and discipline and volleyball at its six center colleges.
“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 stated. “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 take part in athletics. Freshmen and sophomores sometimes make up a C-team roster and likewise function a part of a program’s constructing block. She added a scarcity of C-teams could have a trickle-up impact.
“How are they going to create a program?” Watts stated of her head coaches.
Battle Floor Excessive is Southwest Washington’s fourth-largest highschool with 1,843 college students, in accordance with fall enrollment numbers reported to the Workplace of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Whereas a smaller share of scholars take part in athletics in comparison with colleges of comparable measurement, the Tigers sport a excessive variety of C-teams throughout fall, winter and spring sports activities. This spring, it consists of baseball and softball.
Each Battle Floor and Prairie soccer applications boasted 100-plus gamers final fall.
Woodward stated of Battle Grounds’ 107 gamers final season, 35 have been freshmen. The best freshmen class in his tenure is 42.
Highschool soccer sometimes is a no-cut sport, so with no C-team of largely freshmen, lumping non-varsity freshmen onto the junior varsity roster isn’t that straightforward, the coach stated. Bodily maturity issues in soccer, and C-teams are important for participant growth and program stability.
It’s a loss Woodward hopes doesn’t occur.
“There’s so many ramifications that can go into this,” he stated.
