Cruisers Claim 1A Evergreen League Title

With week 7 of the high school football season in the books we have now a clear picture of what week 10 (district playoffs) will look like.

With only two games left in the regular season, the Cruisers have locked up the 1A Evergreen league championship and the #1 seed into the district crossover game after their win against Elma this past Friday. Congratulations to all players and coaches for this accomplishment.

Eatonville is in the Evergreen 1A conference along with Tenino, Montesano, Elma, and Hoquiam. In the district playoffs, the Evergreen 1A will play crossover games against teams in the TriCo 1A conference to determine the 3 seeds to state the league receives. The TriCo 1A consists of La Center, Castle Rock, Seton Catholic, Columbia, Fort Vancouver, and King’s Way Christian.

The way week 10 will work will be a crossover format. Taking the 1st thorough 3rd place in each league, the format will go as follows:

Evergreen #1 hosts TriCo #3 – Eatonville vs Seton-Catholic

TriCo #1 hosts Evergreen #3 – La Center or Castle Rock vs Montesano

Evergreen #2 hosts TriCo #2 – Tenino vs La Center or Castle Rock

As it stands now, Eatonville will host the Trico #3 which will be Seton-Catholic. Seton-Catholic has two common opponents with the Cruisers. They lost to Elma 69-26 and lost to Tenino 78-26. The date, location, and time for that game are to be determined.

All 3 of those crossover games will be winner-to-state, loser-out games. Once those games are completed, the WIAA seeding committee will meet and seed the 16 teams from around the state that have received berths from their respective leagues. The overall #1 and #2 seeds in the state playoffs will receive home-field advantage until the state championship game which will be played at Harry Lang Stadium in Lakewood.

As most of you may know, any state playoff game where Eatonville would be the home team would not be played in Eatonville due to the requirements the WIAA has for the hosting facility. Eatonville’s stadium/field does not meet those requirements. Eatonville would play as many of those home-field games at Art Crate Field at Bethel High School. The only question would be stadium availability with Spanaway Lake and Graham-Kapowsin also having potential home-field games. If that isn't an option the Cruisers would look at Sparks Stadium in Puyallup and Sunset Stadium in Sumner to host the games.