BE lax forced to forfeit playoffs after discovery of ineligible player

If you glanced at the MaxPreps.com rankings of the top girls’ high school lacrosse teams in the country on April 17, you would notice Bishop England was No. 3 in the nation.

 

But if you checked out the brackets for the South Carolina High School League playoffs, which were scheduled to begin the following day, the Bishops were nowhere to be found.

 

That’s because the South Carolina High School League, the governing body of sports for public schools and a handful of private schools in the Palmetto State, ruled that the Bishops used an ineligible player in the first five games of the season and had to forfeit the contests.

 

That means the Bishops’ 98-game winning streak is history. With the revision, the streak officially reached 82 games, the total after last year’s state championship. The Bishops were 16-0 on the field this spring, but their record was reduced to 11-5. The Bishops’ bid for a seventh consecutive state title also came to an end.

 

According to the organization’s bylaws, if a school is forced to forfeit more than one game that affects playoff seeding, the school is ineligible for the playoffs.

 

“It’s crazy,” BE coach Jeff Weiner said. “The girls just don’t understand why it happened. They had something they worked so hard for taken away because of the slimmest of reasons. They just don’t understand how this happened.”

 

“I still don’t have the answers,”  Weiner said. “I don’t know if I will ever get the answers.” 

 

The Bishops self-reported the violation that involved a fifth-year senior who transferred to BE last year when she was in her fourth year of high school. Bishop England’s process of determining a player’s eligibility does not differentiate between seniors and fifth-year seniors.

 

“We were wrong. We played a player who was ineligible,” BE athletic director Paul Runey said. “Unfortunately, it was one of those things that we missed, that fell through the cracks. I take full responsibility.”

 

Runey noted that Kit Brownell, director of admissions, discovered the violation.  

 

Runey said the student-athlete had some health issues and that’s why she was in her fifth year of high school. Runey and Weiner both said the player entered the contests late in the game and had no real impact on the outcomes. The Bishops outscored opponents 91-11 in the five games the student-athlete played in.

 

The Bishops, who were heavily favored to win yet another state title, have not lost to a foe on the field since Myers Park from Charlotte topped the Bishops on April 10, 2017. The last time the Bishops lost to a team from the Palmetto State was March 4, 2017, when J.L. Mann topped the Bishops.

 

MaxPreps.com still has the Bishops ranked as the No. 1 team in the state and No. 3 in the country despite the five forfeits.

 

That poll is one of the metrics used to decide the 16 teams in the Class AAAA playoffs. Another system used is the power-rankings formula that gives value to each victory and loss. The third metric is a state coaches’ poll in which six coaches produce the state poll. And that was a big factor that did the Bishops in.

 

According to both Runey and Weiner, three of the coaches had the Bishops in the top spot while two had the Bishops at No. 3. The sixth coach placed the Bishops No. 15 on their ballot.

 

It was a heart-breaking end to the career of seven BE players: Evelynn Kitchin, Leslie Wysong, Sierra Fox, Fiona Kelly, Hannah Heyburn, Meredith Clair and Katherine Skultey.

 

“It’s a tough way to end it,” Weiner said. “This is the same group that didn’t get a chance to play for a state title in 2020 because of (COVID-19).”