Wednesday, October 24, 2001
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Wednesday, October 24, 2001 |
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Superintendent DeCotis in the middle of playoff dispute between 3 middle schools By MONROE ROARK
A group of irate parents Monday put Fayette County School System officials between a rock Flat Rock, to be exact and a hard place. Some moms and dads of Flat Rock Middle School football players asked Superintendent John DeCotis to stop all county middle schools from postseason play if a dispute regarding playoff status could not be resolved properly. More than a dozen parents attended a special meeting with DeCotis and other school officials Monday after their team was left out of the playoffs and their appeal was denied by the Metro Middle School Athletic League. They contend that the league bylaws were not followed correctly and their school should be in the playoffs, and they also raised conflict-of-interest questions after a Rising Starr administrator took part in the appeal hearing and subsequent denial. After talking to the parents, DeCotis met Tuesday morning with MMSAL commissioner Jason Byars and the principals of Flat Rock, Rising Starr and Fayette Middle. According to Wayne Robinson of the school system, DeCotis asked if it would be possible for the league to have an emergency meeting Tuesday night, and Byars indicated that the league would attempt to do so. (This edition of The Citizen went to press Tuesday afternoon. Check www.thecitizennews.com for a report on the results from the meeting.) Fayette County's five public middle schools compete in the West region of the MMSAL. The East region is made up of the six Henry County middle schools. Flat Rock, Rising Starr and Fayette Middle each finished the 2001 football season with 3-1 records in region play. The first tiebreaker, head-to-head competition, was moot since all three teams split between each other at 1-1. The second tiebreaker is where it starts to get murky. After games are scheduled between all teams within their respective counties, additional games must be scheduled to fill out the six-game schedule. Teams cannot play everyone in the entire league because middle schools, by state school board law, can only play 60 percent of a high school schedule, which is six games in a football season, not counting playoffs. The matchups for those extra games one for each Henry County school and two for each Fayette County school are determined by a blind draw, so the league does not count those games toward the region standings. The nonregion games are played at the beginning of the season. This fall, Fayette Middle and Flat Rock played a regular region game as well as a nonregion game determined by the draw. Flat Rock won the extra game and finished 5-1 overall, the same record as Rising Starr. Fayette Middle finished 3-3. For the second tiebreaker, league bylaws dictate that the "record against common league opponents" is used. The interpretation of this rule has led to some controversy. League officials only counted the remaining region games, against Booth and Whitewater, which all three schools defeated. Flat Rock parents said Monday that the entire season record should be considered, since all games are against schools within the league, even if everybody doesn't play everybody. They also said that, under any interpretation, the extra Fayette-Flat Rock game should be considered. DeCotis began the meeting Monday by stressing that the school system has absolutely no authority over the league, which is formed and operated by participating coaches and other officials and is autonomous. As the meeting went on, however, he did express his concern about the confusion being caused and the controversy that has resulted. No MMSAL officials were present at the meeting. Byars, who works at Whitewater Middle, was out of school Monday, according to Robinson, who was at the meeting in his capacity as head of secondary school operations. Some parents expressed frustration at Byars' absence, as well as that of Jeff Patterson of Rising Starr, who along with Byars was part of the three-person committee that heard the appeal last Friday. The parents said that Patterson should not have participated since the denial helped Rising Starr, who lost to Flat Rock during the regular season, move from the second seed to the top seed in the region. "He [Patterson] told me he would not be at this meeting unless you ordered him to," one parent told DeCotis and Robinson. The coin toss that ultimately determined the standings was made at an Oct. 15 league meeting, before the regular season was over. Robinson said that he was told the move was made because Fayette had a bye the final week of the season and needed to know if they should continue practicing in case they might get into the playoffs. Robinson, a former high school coach and athletic director, added that such moves are common at the high school level due to the difficulty of various committees getting together repeatedly throughout the season. In her official letter to Byars asking for an appeal, Flat Rock assistant principal and athletic director Audrey Toney said that the early coin toss was done "in spite of my verbal objection...we regarded the coin toss as a contingency solution, not the final selection of teams entitled to playoff berths." Toney's letter was dated Friday. Robinson, who said repeatedly that he was simply relaying the information as he heard it, said that he was told all coaches and representatives at the meeting has no problem with the decision. That statement was met with derision from the Flat Rock parents. After the coin toss, Byars sent an e-mail, dated Oct. 18, to a large number of league officials saying that a review of previous league policy led him to change the situation. He cited a spring 2000 meeting at which football coaches changed the tiebreaker system to include the entire six-game record after head-to-head competition is factored in. This new system was not made a part of the bylaws, which were last revised in 1998. "Based on this information, I must rescind the decision to do a coin flip that was discussed at the Oct. 15 meeting," the e-mail read. "...Rising Starr and Flat Rock will proceed to the playoffs with Flat Rock being the number-one seed due to head-to-head competition." Flat Rock coaches and parents told their players that they were in the playoffs, they said Monday, based on this communication. They did not find out until later that Byars changed his mind again and upheld the coin toss, they said. "We expect our children to follow rules and guidelines of the school system," said Ray Swann, who served as the spokesman for the parents throughout most of the meeting. "We expect our administrators and commissioners to follow the rules also. This is more than a playoff game; it shows the integrity of the system." Robinson said after the meeting that he had absolutely no doubt about the integrity of Byars and Patterson. He told the parents during the meeting, however, that he felt the tiebreaker system did not make sense in some areas and the bylaws should be rewritten. Swann acknowledged the school system's lack of jurisdiction over the league, but he challenged DeCotis, on behalf of the parents, to take whatever necessary steps he could take, such as ordering the suspension of postseason play for all Fayette County middle schools if the league did not resolve the situation properly. "If we don't stand up and do the right thing, we don't have a right to look our children in the face the next time they mess up," said Swann. DeCotis, although pressured repeatedly by several parents at the meeting, would not make an immediate decision. He said the suspension of play in Fayette was "a possibility," but he would make certain whether that was a decision he could make or one that required a special Board of Education meeting. "We've got a lot of information and questions that we need answers to," DeCotis told the parents, adding that he would strive to have a decision by Tuesday morning, since playoff games were scheduled to start Wednesday. Meanwhile, Flat Rock parents left the meeting to plan their next move and assemble the players so they could resume practice, which was not held Monday, in anticipation of a reversal that would allow them to play this week. |