In the wake of a school shooting, two NC high schools fight over a football forfeit
Editor’s note: This column has been updated with Leesville Road’s decision Tuesday night to accept a no contest.
It’s some measure of where we are as a country in 2021 that we’re going to have to figure out the best way to handle football scheduling in the wake of school shootings.
That’s quite a sentence to type.
It’s a real problem, though. The inability of Leesville Road and New Hanover to reschedule their game in Raleigh last Thursday, three days after a student shot and wounded another student on campus at New Hanover, left a school still reeling from the shock of that incident with a forfeit loss on its record.
That wasn’t right.
By Tuesday night, Leesville Road finally agreed to drop the forfeit it was enforcing and declare the game a no contest, not counting in the standings and allowing both teams to replace the game on their schedule.
“It was never our intention to force a forfeit, as evidenced by the steps we took to try to play the game as scheduled,” read a statement Leesville Road released through the Wake County Public School System. “After further consideration, the unplayed game between Leesville Road and New Hanover will be a no contest, and we will continue to not seek the $2,500 restitution payment. We will seek to schedule another game for our Sept. 24 bye week.”
That’s a big swerve from Leesville Road’s initial position, which was that it was “necessary” to accept a forfeit, to New Hanover’s fury and the obvious exasperation of the NCHSAA.
New Hanover didn’t practice Monday or Tuesday and was unwilling to play Thursday as originally scheduled. Leesville Road said it couldn’t host Friday because of Labor Day staffing issues; it also offered to travel to Wilmington on Friday but New Hanover said it had the same issues. Once the game was off, things got sticky.
“We consulted with the NCHSAA, and officials confirmed that we were within the regulations to accept a forfeit,” the Leesville Road statement read. “We felt it was necessary to do so. Without the forfeit, we would only have been able to play a 9-game season. Without playing the originally scheduled 10-game season, our opportunity to qualify for the playoffs or be seeded appropriately could have been impacted.”
While Leesville Road was within its rights to insist on the forfeit, the decision to put a relatively minor variable in playoff seeding and selection — starting this season, almost everything is determined by RPI anyway — over the best interests of everyone involved was clumsy at best and selfish at worst.
It was an ugly resolution to an unfortunate situation, even if it was handled by the letter of the law, and fortunately cooler heads eventually prevailed.
Attempts to reach Leesville Road athletic director Jack Rogers, Wake County athletic director Deran Coe and New Hanover County athletic director Kelly Lewis were not successful.
New Hanover, meanwhile, wanted the NCHSAA to either enforce a no contest or not count the forfeit against its record, a can of worms the NCHSAA was unwilling to open.
“The insensitivity shown by Leesville Road and supported by the NCHSAA is disheartening to say the least,” a Facebook post by New Hanover read.
New Hanover then turned around and played anyway, traveling to Myrtle Beach to play Carolina Forest on Friday and losing. That meant New Hanover took two losses in 24 hours, then had to cancel this week’s game against Wilson Fike because the forfeit counted as a game played and put New Hanover over the 10-game limit. That game is now back on, the Wilmington Star-News reported Tuesday night.
The system just isn’t set up for this. The forfeit/no contest rules and game-contract language are all designed to keep teams from dodging games they didn’t want to play, and ensure confidence in scheduling commitments. They’re not really designed to deal with tragedy. Nor does the NCHSAA have the interest or the administrative mechanisms to interfere.
“The NCHSAA had conversations with the administration at both schools and we encouraged the school, as we always do in these situations, to work things out between themselves,” NCHSAA commissioner Que Tucker said in a statement. “While we are sympathetic to New Hanover in this situation, if the schools are not able to mutually agree to make the game a no-contest, then the terms stipulated in the contract must be followed.”
That’s often been the best way to handle these things in the past, and it usually works well. In almost all instances, high schools have handled the waves of last-second COVID postponements or hurricane disruptions with grace and patience. But changing times call for changing procedures, and taking a different approach or requiring new contract language to address tragic events on campus is something the NCHSAA’s board of directors may have to look at in the future.
That may not be anytime soon. With the NCHSAA under immediate political threat from the legislature for the most spurious of reasons — HB91, which would dissolve the NCHSAA, is scheduled for a vote in the State Senate on Wednesday — it’s not about to become suddenly proactive when it hasn’t been before.
As for Leesville Road, the school may have had its reasons for insisting on the contract as written but a little sympathy and compassion for a school still in shock would have gone a long way, rather than coming to this decision belatedly.
It’s a terrible thing to say, but the way things are going — the New Hanover shooting was one of two at North Carolina high schools on the same day — anybody could find themselves in the same awful position any day.
This story was originally published September 7, 2021 at 4:48 PM.
