The San Marcos High boys soccer team forfeited its match against Santa Barbara last Saturday, which ended in a 1-1 tie, after violating California Interscholastic Federation bylaw No. 600 — competition on an outside team.
The bylaw states that “A student on a high school team becomes ineligible if the student competes in a contest on an outside team, in the same sport, during the student’s high school season of sport.”
On Saturday and Sunday, Santa Barbara Revolution, a local youth soccer league, played semifinal and finals matches that included players from all three Santa Barbara schools.
Santa Barbara had four athletes participating, Dos Pueblos had six and San Marcos had one. All 11 athletes are freshmen.
The San Marcos’ freshman athlete also plays on the varsity soccer team and played in the Royals match against Santa Barbara on Saturday evening.
According to the CIF rule, the punishment states, “Games in which a student participated on his/her high school team after violation of Bylaw 600 shall be forfeited,” which is why San Marcos forfeited its match.
San Marcos athletic director Abe Jahadhmy said the program was unaware a player violated CIF rules until Monday night.
After coaches from the three local schools became aware of players participating in outside competition over the weekend by photographs that were taken, each program tried to find out exactly how many players participated.
Originally, no photograph had caught a San Marcos player, but after Jahadmy received a call from Dos Pueblos’ athletic director, Dan Feldhaus, asking what the punishment was for the offense, he thought to himself if there were kids from DP participating, chances are there were kids from San Marcos also participating.
He asked Feldhaus to ask his kids if any players from San Marcos played. Feldhaus called back stating that his athletes said there were San Marcos players also participating.
At that point, Jahadmy launched an investigation and found one player did in fact violate the rule.
After finding out, Jahadmy called Santa Barbara and forfeited the game. He then sent a letter to the CIF that they would be forfeiting the match the athlete participated in and that they would be appropriately punished according to the rules.
For first offenders of bylaw 600, “The student becomes immediately ineligible for participation with his/her high school team for a number of contests equal to twice the number of contests of outside competition in which the student participated.”
Since the offending San Marcos player only played in one outside contest, he was suspended two games. He will be eligible to play in the team’s next contest after sitting out the two games this past week, a loss against DP Tuesday and a tie against Lompoc Thursday.
“I am glad we caught it when we did,” Jahadmy said.
Had it not been caught before Tuesday, San Marcos would have had to forfeit additional contests.
Jahadmy said San Marcos will not be appealing the rule violation.
“The kids know the rule. It was a violation. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the rule and I agree with it,” Jahadmy said.
Feldhaus confirmed that most of his athletes were suspended two games for participating in one match and Santa Barbara athletic director Joe Chenoweth confirmed the same for his athletes.
Feldhaus and Chenoweth both confirmed they will not be filing an appeal to the CIF either.
email: Jmercado@newspress.com
