SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Boys Varsity Soccer Northwestern beats "Death Penalty" on appeal by 8-7 vote

djt,

W&E reports on the Gilbert Girls thread that their appeal is to be heard this week. The committee has not heard their case yet. Let's see how this plays out and hope that Gilbert gets the same treatment that Northwestern got.

djt,

If one of your students misinterprets one of your rules, in good faith, and screws up.....do they have the right to appeal your punishment to the assistant principal?

Sure, but my rules are designed to tolerate occasional msihaps by having various levels of punishment, and I have documentation of progression so that if they do appeal it, the AP will always side with me. Where govern bodies generally run into trouble is if they have no progression or consistancy then you get into this mess which is a perfect example. Now I agree that allowing NW to paly is the right call, but they still are being unpunished for a rules violation, which is unfair to all of us who are abiding by the rules.
Now a better policy would be to say, if you have one violation in x years (3?,5?) then yhe coach receives a fine and a reprimmand. If you have 2 violations in the same time period then the school receives a reprimmand the coach pays a larger fine and the school is banned from postseason. 3 violations the coach is fined, censured (prohibiting from coaching for 1 year) the school is fined and banned form the post season. If any of the players were involved in all 3 incidents then they would be banned from sports for 1 year(you can't claim ignorance if you get caught for something 3 thimes). If a school has excessive violations (what ever number they decide that may be)in all sports, then all sports are banned from postseason for 1 year and the AD gets fined and reprimanded. That way the primary responsibilty falls on the coach, then the AD, then the players. there is room for a mistake to happen and nothing too serious to come of it, but it severly punishes repeat offenders who after one mishap should know better, and are just trying to circuvent the rules. Also since all schools know the policy, and there a gradual increasements of punishments then if someone appeals the punishment the excutive committee should never overturn the punsihment unless there are acts of "favoritism" being doled out by the executive committee and that would be transparent under the rules/ punishments which would end all speculation of favoritism. Now you have a fair equitable system.

DJT,

You make some good points about progression and accountability in administering the rules. Another key element to getting support for administration, though, is to examine each incident individually and make sure you know exactly what the offense is and the circumstances surrounding it before recommending punishment.

Just to say "Northwestern, practices out of season--hey no biggie" doesn't really give an accurate representation of what happened. According to the reports I've read, there is room to debate the legality of some NW players participating in what was a Discoveries practice, not a Northwestern practice. Here's how I read the situation, with the limited information available:

-NW coach works with an outside club team in the off season (legal).
-Said team contains some NW players, but fewer than the 75% rule allows (legal).
-Practice takes place on property that according to the paper was possessed by rental agreement by the outside club (legal).
-The club's landolord in this case was the school district (Illegal? Questionable?).

Everything about the club team scenario fits within the rules except for the rule against a coach using school facilities to coach an outside team, and there is room to argue whether, in the presence of a legal rental contract or other formal agreement, the facilities in question would be considered "school facilities" while being rented out as Discoveries facilities. I'm just guessing like almost everyone else; I don't know if this was the rationale for the executive committee's decision, but I do know if I were to pitch an appeal in this case, that would be the argument I would make.

I don't have a dog in the fight; I'm just speculating. I'd like to make sense of this as much as anyone, for all of our sakes. I hope the League lets all of the teams and athletes in question participate this year--there was very little to find fault with in any of the cases except just the LOCATION of the club practices, not the substance of them...which is a silly thing to ruin someone's season over.

I agree to that everything is legal according to the high school league and hence the over-turning of the postseason ban, my issue is more with the league itself than with this particular case. If the purpose of these rules is for fairnes and equitity then how are any of these things:
-NW coach works with an outside club team in the off season (legal).
-Said team contains some NW players, but fewer than the 75% rule allows (legal).
-Practice takes place on property that according to the paper was possessed by rental agreement by the outside club (legal).
Legal in the 1st place? Last May Coach Heise had an interesting breakdown on poverty rates at schools and their success in soccer, and suprisingly schools with high poverty rates are terrible at soccer, why because they don't have the same access to play that kids at rich schools do. If I were to take 8 of my players to a public park 2-3 times during the week and every Saturday in the fall and practice/ play with the kids we would be banned from the posteseason. If I put a nominal name to it and claim its an "outside" organization its perfectly legal. Now I know CRSA has fincial assistance for disadvantaged players as well as CUFC but there is more than just a fee obstacle, poor kids have NO transportation, my assistant and I drive half our team home every night after practice, if they were to try and play for these outside organizations, how would they get there? This leads to the unequitity in soccer in particular. Now I understand that club soccer will be around kids want to play and that's their right, but I do know most clubs don't have practice in June and July, since most of the upper level teams are coached by high school coaches is it too much to ask to have a dead period of December/January as well to eliminate these sticky issues of what's "club" practice or what's "high school" practice because from where I'm sitting it looks pretty much the same to me.

No I teach science we're all terrible spellers/ typers

Why not change the rule to state that you cannot coach ANY of your players in the off season. You would still ba able to coach club, you would just have to coach the other gender. That way, none of this type of thing would ever happen.

Again, why didn't they just practice on one of Manchester's grass fields??? Would have avoided this all.