Perhaps I’m in a minority of one here, but I wish the MIAA had been allowed to carry out its initial decision to force Medford High to forfeit its Division 1 North boys soccer final in favor of Lincoln-Sudbury.
I wish the matter had never been taken to court, and that, once there, the courts didn’t intervene long enough for Medford to play the game against LS — a game the Mustangs eventually lost anyway.
Please do not misunderstand. I, like just about everyone else think it’s a travesty to make high school students suffer because of adult incompetence. And that’s exactly what this was.
Somewhere within the Medford administration, a clerical error occurred that allowed a fifth-year senior — one who needed to go through the waiver process outlined in the MIAA handbook — to play the entire season, including the Division 1 North tournament.
The rules here are pretty clear. This isn’t college. There are no red-shirt provisions. You get four years of eligibility except in cases where there is such extreme hardship (such as an athlete being sick or injured for an entire year), and there is an age cutoff where you cannot have turned 19 prior to a certain date. If those conditions exist, you can play, but you need a waiver allowing you to do so.
There is no ambiguity about this.
But things fell through the cracks, apparently, and this player was allowed to participate all fall. Once the matter came to the Medford administration’s attention, the city “self-reported it.” However, the MIAA (Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association), which governs high school sports in the commonwealth, applied the appropriate penalty. Thus, the Mustangs, who had made the Division 1 North final, were penalized by being disqualified from participating in that game, which was played last Saturday at Lynn’s Manning Field.
Let’s establish one thing: the MIAA was not the guilty party here. All it did was enforce a rule that is written clearly and concisely in the student handbook.
At issue here are adults who trot out the “kid” card every time they do something wrong. Why should kids have to pay for what adults do? It’s not their fault. They did what they were supposed to do. But mean old adults have to spoil it for everybody.
And every bit of that is right, of course. There is nothing worse than seeing kids pay the price because the people who are supposed to be looking out for them cannot seem to be able to do that.
But the adults who messed up here can’t be let off the hook that easily. The fact remains one ineligible kid, who is a year older than everyone else, presumably a year stronger (which, at that age, makes a big difference) and, arguably, is a big reason why the Mustangs were among the best teams in the region. It may seem harmless and nit-picky, but you have to ask yourself what that record would be had the kid not been allowed to play without going through proper channels.
And as for kids being penalized, you can’t feel anything but bad for any boy or girls whose accomplishments get wiped out because of administrative malfeasance.
But the goal here is to follow the rules, and to have someone in your school system who has the responsibility to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. This is important stuff. Remember the old saw, “for the want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe, the horse was lost.” Those little things turn into big things mighty quickly. Take care of those i’s and t’s and you won’t be forfeiting games later in the season.
Besides, it would do some of these administrators a world of good to see the faces on the athletes who have just had their seasons taken away from them. Maybe next time, they’ll be more attentive to those little things.
Now, let’s compare this with the folks down in Martha’s Vineyard, two of whose boys soccer players jostled a referee after a controversial call resulted in a loss.
The MIAA came down hard on those kids, and their coach. The two players are done for the entire year.
We got no “but these are good kids” protestations from Martha’s Vineyard officials. They took their punishment without a word of protest.
Of course, it’s easier to do that when you don’t have a leg to stand on. But we’ve seen enough times that even when that’s the case, adults try to use the courts to get what they want. Hats off to the Martha’s Vineyard authorities for resisting the urge.
As for the Medford folks, sorry. To me, they should be made to own their mistake and contemplate its consequences. Otherwise, why even have rules at all?