The Mountain Valley High School boys’ soccer team has forfeited its place in Class B South playoffs after discovering it had used an ineligible player this season.
On Monday, coach JT Taylor learned that one of the team’s three exchange students, who school officials will not identify, had already graduated high school in his home country. According to Maine Principals’ Association rules, that made him ineligible to play for the team.
“The problem was reported to JT, and he reported it to me,” Mountain Valley High School Athletic Director Alan Cayer said Thursday. “I investigated the situation and called the MPA on Tuesday to let them know.”
“We did the right thing,” Cayer added, “but it hurts.”
Taylor, via email, declined to speak, saying only that “it has been a difficult couple of days.”
The Falcons finished 8-3-3 in Mountain Valley Conference competition this season and earned the No. 5 seed in the Class B South playoffs. They were scheduled to face No. 4 Lincoln Academy on Tuesday.
MPA Assistant Executive Director Mike Bisson said the call came too late to reseed the tournament. Instead, Lincoln Academy received a bye into the regional semifinals.
“We haven’t had this situation a lot,” Bisson said. “And the timing was tough. Ideally, you’d forfeit the games, run the results through again, reseed the teams and go from there. But it would have been difficult to redo the playoffs at that point. Some teams had already played preliminary round games.”
That said, Bisson commended Mountain Valley for the way it handled the process.
“They were thorough in their investigation, and they did it in as timely a manner as possible so as not to hold up the playoffs,” Bisson said. “It’s just an unfortunate situation for everyone.”
The rule for foreign students, summarized on the MPA’s website, reads as follows: “Both foreign exchange students and foreign students must meet all eligibility requirements. Schools should pay particular attention to age requirements (under 20), the eight semester rule, the four seasons of competition rule, and the undergraduate rule, which is often the most difficult to ascertain. Schools must ensure that a student has not graduated from the home country’s equivalent of high school.”
So what happened at Mountain Valley?
“We forgot to check a box,” Cayer said. “It was an oversight on the administration’s side of things. It won’t happen again, I can tell you that.”
The school held a parents meeting Wednesday night to explain the situation.
“We’re all still reeling from this,” Cayer said.
According to Bisson, the wins Mountain Valley accrued this season will be reviewed by the MPA’s soccer committee, which next meets on Nov. 28. From there, any recommendation that committee makes will be forwarded to the Interscholastic Management Committee for any applicable action.
“We need to determine exactly which games the athlete played in,” Bisson said, “and the committee will determine what will happen from there.”
There is little precedent for vacating an entire season’s worth of wins. The most recent high-profile forfeiture of playoff wins was a case that took more than two years to sort out. In 2012, the MPA vacated Cheverus High School’s 2009-10 Class A basketball state and western regional championships after it determined the team had used an ineligible player during the season.
The Stags defeated Edward Little High School of Auburn in the state final, 55-50, and the player in question was the team’s leading scorer with 23 points. In that instance, the team also reported the situation, but had to abide by a legal injunction that allowed the player in question to continue playing pending an appeal.
The MPA did not offer Cheverus’ opponents those titles, though, nor did it strip the team of the wins it had accrued that season.
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