April 16, 2023 — One of many higher championship groups gained’t have an opportunity to increase its streak in 2023

Daniel Island Bishop England (S.C.) is a workforce which has performed fairly properly over the past six years. The Bishops have gained the final six South Carolina state championships on supply (having not performed the 2020 match as a result of COVID-19), and have spun a 98-game successful streak since 2017.

However in a single self-reported ruling, all of that has collapsed into historical past.

Bishop England has, basically, withdrawn from the 2023 state match due to the usage of an ineligible participant in a number of video games this season. The scholar, a post-graduate switch, had performed 5 matches for the Bishops.

And, in accordance with the bylaws of the South Carolina Excessive Faculty League, if a workforce forfeits a couple of sport that impacts playoff seeding for the state match, the sports activities workforce is ineligible for the playoffs. 

“We have been unsuitable. We performed a participant who was ineligible,” Bishop England athletic director Paul Runey tells The Daniel Island Information. “It was simply a kind of issues, that we missed, that fell via the cracks and I take full accountability. Package Brownell, the director of admissions, caught it. If she hadn’t, the lady would nonetheless be taking part in. The identify simply didn’t register with me on the time.”

I discover, nonetheless, the cessation of Bishop England’s season considerably draconian. The forfeiture rule, for me, is an answer in sports activities the place video games are uncommon, akin to soccer. If an athletic division self-reports an ineligible participant, the motion of recognizing the ineligibility and its impact on a season could possibly be as few as one week’s price of video games — i.e., one.

Examine that with lacrosse, the place the season is 16 video games. A participant who competes whereas ineligible might play as many as 4 video games in per week, so the second that ineligible participant steps on the sector for the second time, it’s far too late to right the state of affairs.

Had the Bishops not had the 5 forfeits, they might be coming into the state Class 4A state match with a 16-0, as the highest total season, and with the strain of extending their championship streak to seven.

That, regrettably, gained’t be occurring this 12 months.