Oct 11, 2007

Florida Southern, DQ'ed?

From the NCWSA website comes this little ditty about the Eastern Regionals and Florida Southern being disqualified due to an ineligible skier.
"Following Florida Southern Colleges disqualification from Regionals due to sking an ineligble skier the following is the revised scorebook. The Alabama Crimson Tide are now your 2007 Regional Champions."
Woo Hoo! Roll Tide, we guess.

But, what gives? What happened? How does someone slip through the cracks like that? Was it a simple mistake or something more sinister, like, a plot to take down the Hope Machine?

Inquiring minds want to know.

**Update**
Well, we ventured over to the skifly, with predictable results. but, its worth a shot if you can handle a bunch of bitching.

Howevs, there were a couple of good posts..including this one from an actual NCWSA person!!

As a NCWSA Board member, I'd like to try and add a little insight to this conversation and clarify a few points in this thread. I think Mich skier hit our goal as an organization pretty much right on the head in his above post.

Also I'd like to preface this by saying I was not at the Eastern Regionals. I can only comment on what has been sent to me. Saying that, I think the Eastern Region representatives made the right decision when they DQ'd FSC for an NCWSA rules violation. FSC did make an appeal to the NCWSA Board. It was given very careful consideration and discussion before the ultimate decision to deny it was made. The Eastern Region did allow them to compete without having their eligibility letter on site at tournament registration, something we would not have done here in the west. While a copy of it was emailed during the day Saturday, it was unrealistic to expect it could be read immediately at a lake with no internet access by board members who were working as officials. While I believe that no attempt was made to cover the fact that their skier was ineligible and that it was an honest mistake, it would have been caught had the letter been turned in on time for that event, and an email does not constitute an eligibility letter per our rules.

The board did conduct a thorough review of their appeal, and everyone feels bad about these skiers not participating in Nationals. Contrary to what others have posted, the University involved had nothing to do whatsoever with our decision. I did not care at all which school was involved. While we are not an NCAA sport, the NCWSA strives to maintain our reputation as a legitimate collegiate sports organization, and the integrity of our rules and desire to promote an equitable playing field for all teams. In fairness to the 65 programs or so nationwide that did follow the rules, we could not allow the team that did not to go to Nationals, regardless if it was intentional or not.

I sincerely hope that this does not hurt the FSC program long term, as they do have a strong history in the NCWSA and I hope to see them rebound from this in 2008. I sympathize with the rest of the team who feels they are being punished, but compare it to the NCAA, where a violation can cause future postseason suspension and loss of scholarships that damages programs long term.

I hope everyone realizes that there was no agenda to punish an elite team, or a Florida team, or some of the other misconceptions I've seen on this thread. I wish we had the ability to set up the appeals process and have the staff positions available in the NCAA, but the reality is this is a volunteer board that gives every appeal and voting issue fair consideration and ultimately has done it's best to make decisions that are fair to all programs. Each region elects a board of directors annually, and the NCWSA has created many new committees in the last year to try and give teams greater opportunity to participate in and help run this sport. I encourage anyone who does not like the decisions being made or feels they can help benefit the sport to get involved.

Congratulations to the 15 programs qualified for Nationals and the 5 more from the west that will be decided next weekend.
Sincerely,
Harley Wallace
NCWSA Western Director, NCWSA Vice Chairman


Links:
Revised Score book : NCWSA

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:02 PM

    i understood that FSC had an inelligible skiier at regionals....someone that was not a full time student only taking 3 hours of classes.....lots of discussion about this on www.skifly.com

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  2. Anonymous8:25 PM

    After reading Harley Wallace's post a question came to mind: why did FSU not let an alternate skier compete? why risk the whole team's DQ by letting someone that they knew was ineligable ski?

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  3. From what I have heard, it appears that they did not understand that Aurelian was not eligible. But with a skier of that quality it raises the question of if they were trying to pull a fast one. With out his scores they would have had a tough time placing 3rd or possible even 4th at nationals. With his scores they belived they had a legit chance at knocking off one of the top two. Seems to me that either they were intentionaly cheating or just incompetent, which is better?

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  4. Either that or just a simple mistake. I tend to think that no one would intentionally do that and risk what happened and angering the rest of the team.

    that would make more sense no?

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  5. Didn't they need to have a eligibility letter at conference? I mean come on, unless the whole team is freshman they should have known better, they had to have done this on purpose.

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  6. on purpose? Intentionally screw something up so they wouldnt be able to go to nationals? Really?

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  7. Anonymous7:55 AM

    I dont think there is a confrence tournament in the eastern region. there was a tournament in florida, but the southern confrence (florida) seems to play by its own rules. espicially as FSC is the only team to field a full team at florida tournaments.

    ReplyDelete

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