With Kingston High School opening in less than a year, the North Kitsap School District is ready to finalize plans for the Buccaneers’ athletic programs and wants as much community input as possible before January, when the school board looks at a final recommendation from its Athletics and Activities Committee.

Not only do uniforms sporting the maroon, gold and white school colors have to be ordered for the new teams, but coaches also need to be hired and games scheduled. The next step will be to hire an athletic director for KHS that can get the programs underway.

In the last month, the district has been surveying the community for comments on a draft proposal for team sports that will be offered at the new high school. The preliminary proposal created by the Athletics and Activities Committee, chaired by Greg Epperson, executive director of the district’s Student Support Services, and Trish Olson, North Kitsap High School athletics coordinator, was presented to the community at a meeting last month at Kingston Junior High, attended by well over 100 parents and students who had the opportunity to ask questions and give input.

The district continues to seek public input on the athletic plan and asks parents to take a look at the proposal, then fill out an on-line survey at www.nksd.wednet.edu. So far it’s received about 165 surveys back, said Chris Case, director of Communications and Community Relations, “with a range of points of view.”

Students, including current eighth-graders who will be incoming freshmen next year, will be surveyed later. Over 200 were surveyed last spring and the district will talk to them again, Case said.

The school board will hear final comments on the KHS athletic plan in January at its regular meeting and make a final decision later in the month or in February though even then, Case said, nothing will be set in stone until the district finds out how much financial support it will receive from the state legislature in May. If it comes up short, the athletic programs could change again due to budgetary constraints.

The preliminary athletics proposal at KHS would offer the same fall, winter and spring sports as NKHS. Only gymnastics and swimming would have combined teams from the two schools. Levy funds which are paying for the new high school also provide for the cost of additional coaches, equipment and uniforms for the new sports teams.

Rules of the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, the state organization that governs sports leagues, allow students to participate in a sport at another nearby school if it is not offered at their own school. But students will not be allowed to stay with their former team at NKHS instead of moving to a new team at KHS. Epperson said WIAA makes no exceptions to this.

KHS would host competitive games for all of its teams except football; though KHS will have an astro-turf practice field, football games will be held in NKHS stadium. KHS will host soccer, baseball and fast pitch games. Field lighting for evening games is not being installed at this point due to a lack of funds though the field is wired and ready for fixtures, said Robin Shoemaker, director of NKSD Capital Programs. Money came up short to put in tennis courts as well.

NKSD Superintendent Gene Medina is already spearheading a fund-raising effort for lighting with the Kingston-North Kitsap Rotary Club where he is a member. If funding falls short next spring with the state legislature, the district may have to rely even more on community support and sponsorships to fund some of the extras.

KHS “facility

challenged” already

After spreading money around to renovate other schools in the district, the pot of levy funds is about empty. The lights and tennis courts aren’t the only missing pieces from the original plan for KHS. First designed to hold 1,200 students, the new school has room for 800. An additional classroom wing, auxiliary gymnasium and performing arts venue also ended up on the waiting list for future funding, Shoemaker said.

With limited space available for practice and competition of multiple sports teams (at the varsity, junior varsity and ‘C’ levels), it will be up to coaches and the school’s administrators to juggle schedules, taking into account extracurricular activities in addition to sports, Epperson said. Some practices may get spread out to the nearby Kingston Junior High or Wolfle and Gordon elementary schools if needed.

The school has only the gymnasium and commons area for larger groups, including sports teams, to meet.

The commons area also serves as the lunch room and has been equipped to multi-task: above the counter and kitchen areas where students will enter to get hot lunches, there is a wide motorized rack above that will store wrestling mats. When the wrestlers practice, the mats will be lowered down and spread out in the commons area.

Coordinating the sports programs at KHS will be a bit of a juggle the first year, Epperson said, but the details will get worked out once an athletic director and coaches are in place.

High school league alignments

Next September, when Kingston High School opens with a projected enrollment of 819 students, it will compete in the 2A class, said North Kitsap High School Athletic Coordinator Trish Olson. The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, which sets league alignments for public schools in the state, looks at the number of students in grades 10-12 to determine the classification. KHS is projected to have 599 students in grades 10-12. Class 2A is open to schools with 468 to 918 students in grades 10-12.

NKHS, though it will have fewer students, will remain in the 4A class of the Narrows League through the 2007-2008 school year as WIAA aligns the league in two-year cycles, Olson said. NKHS is projected to have 1,183 students in grades 9-12; 849 in grades 10-12 which would also make it eligible to compete in the 2A class alongside the Kingston school.

If NKHS moves to a 2A class beginning with the 2008-2009 school year, it will compete with Kingston in the West Central District Three Olympic League for 2A and 3A high schools, including Bremerton, Klahowya, North Mason, Olympic, Peninsula, Port Angeles, Port Townsend and Sequim.

District seeks input

on middle school sports program

The North Kitsap School District will host a community meeting at 7 p.m. Nov. 8 in Poulsbo Junior High to discuss athletic program offerings at the two middle schools that will be created next year, in conjunction with the opening of the new Kingston High School.

Poulsbo and Kingston junior high schools, which currently house grades 7-9, will shift to accommodate grades 6-8; North Kitsap and Kingston high schools will house grades 9-12.

At the meeting, a preliminary proposal of team sports will be presented and the community will have the opportunity to respond and ask questions.

For more information, contact Chris Case, Community Relations Coordinator at North Kitsap School District, (360) 779-8703.