Seton Catholic celebrates another WIAA Scholastic Cup

Seton Catholic has once again earned the Class 1A WIAA Scholastic Cup, rewarding athletic success, academic performance, and student involvement across the entire school year.

The Seton Catholic Cougars are once again the Class 1A Scholastic Cup champions, a WIAA competition that uses a points system to determine the school with the best teams and activities, along with their academic performances, for an academic year

Paul Valencia
Clark County Today

They started winning in the fall.

They kept winning in the winter.

The only thing that stopped them from winning was the summer, when the academic year came to an end after the spring season.

The Seton Catholic Cougars are WIAA Scholastic Cup champions … again.

This is the third time in the past four academic years that Seton Catholic has claimed the Class 1A Scholastic Cup.

“In our opinion, it is the most prestigious award you can win in the WIAA,” said Phil Kent, the athletic director at Seton Catholic. “When you have one of these banners, it means you are doing everything well. You’re really, really strong athletically, but you are also really strong academically. You’re strong in sportsmanship. And you’re strong in your activities.”

So what exactly is the Scholastic Cup?

The WIAA’s website notes that the cup “recognized performance in the classroom as well as on the playing surface. Schools that finish at the top of the respective classifications in state athletic competition receive points, as do schools that finish at the top in team academic performance.” Sportsmanship is also a factor. School gets deducted points for ejections from a contest, for example.

All the points are tallied after the fall, winter, and spring seasons, and the school with the most points is declared the winner.

Seton Catholic scored 2,155 points, easily outdistancing King’s, which scored 1,416 to finish second in Class 1A.

The football teams finished second in state to score 80 points. The girls soccer team finished third for 60 points. So, too, did the boys golf team. All traditional team sports qualified for their state tournaments.

Academically, Seton Catholic had the best grade-point average in eight sports and two activities – band and choir.

According to the Seton Catholic website, “the comprehensive Seton Catholic student is a young person who aspires to higher learning, deeper faith, and stronger character in all that they do.”

“That’s why it’s such a big award for us,” Kent said.

“In our mission statement, it is about growing the comprehensive student. They are fully well rounded. They are growing academically. They are growing spiritually. They are growing athletically.”

In fact, Kent notes the Scholastic Cup to all incoming families or any parent who is interested in having their child attend Seton Catholic.

“I’d rather have a Scholastic Cup banner and no state championship banners than state championship banners and no Scholastic Cup banner,” Kent said.

Camas, which won the Class 4A Scholastic Cup last school year, finished fifth in 4A this school year. Columbia River placed eighth this academic year in the Class 2A standings.

For more details, including the breakdown of the scoring for the Scholastic Cup, go to: https://www.wiaa.com/scholasticcup/