NJ's No.1 girls team DQ'd from state tournament

Seems like at least one team in the Metroplex every year has to forfeit a district game at the end of the regular season because it was discovered they scheduled too many games.

IIRC, I believe it cost Lewisville Hebron a playoff berth in 2002.

 

You're right, Hondo. Shabazz made a mistake, but the punishment doesn't fit the crime. It's not like the team played 10 too many games, or even 5. The coach, to me, seems to be mostly to blame for what happened, and, to a much lesser extent, the hapless AD. As Spnited pointed out, Newark schools are a mess. I'm surprised they even have an AD.

I'm wondering if the team should have been allowed to enter the playoffs -- but with the coach suspended (and not allowed to be on the premises for the game or games). That way, the girls aren't punished for an error they had nothing to do with. This seems to be a case where the rules could be relaxed by the NJSIAA, one of the lamest state associations in the country. (New Jersey has, if I'm not mistaken, 20 "state" football champions that are really regional champions.)

I also wonder who ratted on Shabazz. My guess is that it was a big, mostly white, North Jersey suburban school that might have played Shabazz in a later round. There's a tinge of race in this whole thing. I think that's one of the reasons why the school and the school district has circled the wagons.

 

Nobody has to rat on the team. All you have to do as the governing body is see how many games they have played and realize it's too many.

 

Yeah, what's to rat on? When someone noticed their record was 20-0 and they still had games to play, that was a pretty good clue.

 

Kentucky's Limitation of Seasons for each sport: http://www.khsaa.org/handbook/bylaws/bylaw25.pdf

A good thing about Kentucky is that it has a online database of schedules/scores. Since it went up, schools getting DQ'd for playing too many contests has gone down. If a school fails to report a result (pretty common in these five-games-a-day softball tournaments), fines and probation are possible.

One of the top girls' soccer programs was kicked out before the district tournament began. Second time in four years the coach had broken the rule, but the first time, no one reported it until after the postseason began, thus team was still eligible to compete.

 

Last year (or the year before) a girls team got disqualified from the state tournament because it used an ineligible player in 20 of its 24 games (or something like that). If I remember correctly it had to do with the player not sitting out enough days because of the transfer rule.

 

I don't think you guys understand how things work in Jersey. I'm allowed to say it's not exactly the most progressive state in the nation. As I said, I wouldn't be surprised if "someone" was from another school.

The Ledger reported that there's supposed to be some sort of hearing on this today. Their first-round game against Morristown is scheduled for 4 p.m.

 

Shabazz ratted on themselves. Rule clearly states no more than 26 games before the tournament. When their record to start the tournament is 26-2 (two losses against out of state opponents) then the red flag goes up and they're out.
Coach should have told the team their in-state 56-game winning streak would be over as they're forfeitting their last two games to stay eligible for the state tournament. Coach didn't do that.

 

http://www.nj.com/hssports/girlsbasketball/ledger/stories/index.ssf?/base/sports-0/11727276169830.xml&coll=1

Difference in the case of the St. Augustine baseball team was they had already made it to the sectional final and won it before the infraction was discovered and self-reported the day after winning a state sectional title. They were stripped of the state sectional title (so they couldn't play in the state group final). They also forfeited their right to play for their league title. So in the case of Shabazz, they're cutting off the violator before the tournament starts to avoid problems down the road.

NJ is a backwards state when it comes to the outdoor sports -- allowing regular season games and league tournament games to take place during the state tournament.

 

OK, fair enough. So, if I understand this right, Shabazz did not hide the fact that its record was 26-2, thinking that the one tournament didn't count because it was more like just one game.

You're right about the coach, EStreet: If she would have asked beforehand the NJSIAA if that Roundball Classic would have counted against the total, she could have adjusted the schedule another way. I still feel bad for the players. They can't help that their coach is a dipshit, can they?

 

The players can't help that Newark Board of Education didn't give the school a real AD to make sure this didn't happen. I wouldn't go as far as calling the coach names.

 

I think you're reading race into something with no evidence at all other than your perception of how things are in the state.