1B tournament begins new format

A new league/district tournament format began this week for county 1B basketball.

The four-team tournament for the Southeast 1B league opened at home sites Friday and concludes Saturday at Colfax, with two boys teams and two girls teams advancing to a regional round – one step closer to state at Spokane Arena.

This year’s four-team tournament revises the six-team tournament which was also double elimination, allowing for teams with lesser results from the regular season to get into the playoffs.

The Southeast 1B League has seven teams now, down from as many as 10 previously. A recent reduction was the addition of LaCrosse to St. John/Endicott.

Farther back, during the era of the “B” classification – before 1B and 2B – local teams played in the Whitman County League, which, in the 1970s and early ‘80s, also had as many as 10 teams, before it started to constrict with (sports) co-ops forming such as Garfield/Palouse, St. John/Endicott and Tekoa/Oakesdale.

The Whitman County league followed its regular season with a six-team tournament at Endicott.

From the brackets there, two teams would advance to meet two from the former Blue Mountain League for districts. The single-B Blue Mountain League consisted of schools on the Highway 12 corridor such as Pomeroy, Asotin, DeSales, Touchet, Prescott, and farther back, Kahlotus.

“As time went on, these small towns got smaller,” said Ken Lindgren, Oakesdale athletic director and longtime teacher and coach, who also played in the old Whitman County League for Tekoa.

The Blue Mountain and Whitman County League district tournament would culminate at Beasley Coliseum at WSU, where two teams would advance to the state B tournament in Spokane.

A seven-team league carried the Endicott tournament into the 2000s.

Soon after, when the WIAA split the B classification into 1B and 2B, Whitman County teams became part of the Southeast 1B league, beginning the era of the six-team league tournament played at sites such as Clarkston High School, Colfax High School and the igloo at Walla Walla Community College. From there the route to state went through a regional round to make it to an eight-team final bracket at Spokane Arena.