Editor,

Lest anyone feels sorry for the Archbishop Murphy football team, which has now had five consecutive forfeits, here are the facts about private schools like ATM competing in sports versus small, rural public schools.

For the past seven years in the Cascade Conference, in the major team sports Archbishop Murphy and King’s have combined to win 90 percent of the Conference Championships. Over this same time period, South Whidbey High School has not won one single championship and, in fact, has only finished in second place one time. This is exactly why both Lakewood and Coupeville High School chose to leave the Cascade Conference. However, the schools that should have left are the private schools, which have no business competing against small public schools like South Whidbey, Sultan, Granite Falls, etc.

The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) that runs high school sports in the state of Washington has in its mission statement as one of its core values, “fair and equitable” competition. Unfortunately, this core value is clearly not honored in the Cascade Conference. It’s time that private schools, with their many advantages, compete against each other, rather than continue to dominate play in small school conferences like the Cascade Conference.

EMERSON ROBBINS

Freeland