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ROANOKE RAPIDS - Roanoke Rapids High School has forfeited all six of its wins from this year's football season and both of the men's track team's meet victories after discovering an ineligible player participated on both teams. The school could also be facing a $500 fine.
Principal Monica Smith-Wolfter said the infraction of North Carolina High School Association athletic rules involved using a player who was too old to participate.
The forfeiture negates a 6-6 football campaign that ended in a playoff loss by the Yellow Jackets, and it results in the track team's record changing from 2-6 to 0-8. Athletic Director David Brown said it has no effect on the individual athletes who qualified for regional and state track and field competition.
“A student cannot turn 19 before Oct. 16 (of the academic year) to participate in athletics,” Smith-Wolfter said of the rules infraction. This student, whom she did not identify, did not meet that eligibility requirement. “It was an oversight,” she said, explaining no one in the school or athletic administration knew of the violation until last week.
Smith-Wolfter said the school system is converting to a new software program that tracks student records and helps monitor student eligibility for athletics. She said the new system will be in place and used in the next academic year. It was during a training session for this equipment, when current year student information was being entered into the software, when the computer system flagged the ineligible player.
Brown discovered the problem during the training on the new system last week, on May 16, Smith-Wolfter said.
Brown said he and the coaches involved, football coach Tim Bennett and track coach Ed Nelson, checked their records to make sure the computer warning was correct.
“Once we confirmed it, we went straight to her (Smith-Wolfter),” Brown said. “Mrs. Wolfter depends on me. Something slipped by. It's totally my mistake,” he said.
Smith-Wolfter said the school immediately called the North Carolina High School Association with the news, and on May 17 sent a letter to the organization explaining what had happened. She said she has also contacted all the schools in the Northern Carolina Conference, informing them of the forfeitures.
Que Tucker, deputy executive director of the Association, said Brown informed her of the infraction last week by phone, but as of yesterday afternoon she had not yet received a written statement regarding the issue.
As a result she could not discuss the Roanoke Rapids case, but she said in any such eligibility case there are automatic penalties spelled out in the Association rule book.
She said it matters not whether the student played in the game - if he suited up he is considered to have participated.
In addition to forfeiting the games, she said the book also calls for a fine of $500 for using an ineligible player. However, she said the association does not typically fine a school for multiple infractions using the same individual.
“If we find a student has participated in more than one, they have to forfeit all of the contests, but we typically impose just one fine. ... we're not trying to break the banks of our members schools,” she said.
While regrettable, Tucker said it is not all that unusual for schools to forfeit games for using ineligible students, or for paying fines for a variety of infractions.
“I don't want to say it happens often, but it happens periodically during a sports season that we find folks who have used ineligibles,” she said. “We do a penalty report each semester and share that with our board. When our board came (for a meeting) in may, we gave them a list of 225 paid or waived fines.”
She said those where from all schools throughout the state, and many of those fines may have been for other infractions, such as a head coach missing a required rules clinic. Such fines are waived if the coach has an acceptable reason , such as being out of the country or on a trip out of state.
As for a fine regarding an ineligible student, she said the association generally will waive the fine if it determines the school could not have known the student was ineligible. Such an occurrence would include a student falsifying records given to the school.
This case, according to Brown and Smith-Wolfter, dealt with no such action.
“We won't appeal any fine,” Brown said. “We've got no reason to appeal, we found it out, we reported it, I don't know why we would appeal anything.”
He said the student in question has been notified by his coaches. Bennett said he planned to meet with the football team today to let them know what had happened.
“It's unfortunate, for the player and the team,” Bennett said. “It's an honest mistake. In my 11 years we've never had this happen. We take a lot of pride in playing by the rules. We're learn from it and make sure it doesn't happen again.”
Track Coach Ed Nelson echoed those comments.
“It's an unfortunate event for everyone involved,” he said. “We did the right thing in reporting it, and it's something we have to learn from and go on, hopefully never repeat this again.”
Nelson said he had not yet heard much talk from students at the school about the incident. He said he also planned to meet with his team today to inform them of what happened.
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