Boiling Springs Crest High School’s (NC) football team was supposed to play in the state semi-finals tonight, but instead the school turned itself in for inadvertently using an ineligible player earlier in the season and consequently forfeiting tonight’s game.  I can only imagine how disappointed those kids are tonight, and I doubt that disappointment will ever go away.  I know I’d have given half my teeth to be able to play for a shot at the state finals when I was playing high school sports and I doubt I wouldn’t have been too graceful in handling that kind of disappointment.

The story I read doesn’t say exactly what happened so I’m not sure who at the school blew the whistle, but whether or not it was the coach he now has an opportunity to teach his players a life lesson that will stick with them forever.  He’ll get the chance to show them how to deal with disappointment, to put things in perspective for them and to help them understand that what they did was the right thing. 

This is what activities like high school football are supposed to be all about; learning to give your best effort at all times, to support your teammates and above all to play with honor.  Part of playing with honor is playing within the rules, and even if you break the rules by accident you’ve basically lost honor.  The way to regain your honor is to deal with the situation openly and honestly, and to take your medicine no matter how bitter.

At this point we don’t know if the ineligible player was a star, a benchwarmer or someone in between, but as they say in the story "rules are rules." Part of me thinks that if it’s an innocent mistake and it was only one player and it wasn’t for the entire season (i.e. a minor infraction) then you should come up with some punishment that doesn’t crush dozens of boys’ dreams.  Unfortunately experience tells me that if you come up with any kind of nuanced system there will be a bunch of dumb-ass, win-at-all-costs coaches that drive a truck through every loophole.  The fact that these kids, who haven’t done anything wrong, will have to suffer because of what a bunch of ne’er-do-wells have done in the past is just one more life lesson they’ll get out of this.

In the long run the folks at Boiling Springs Crest are going to gain more out of this forfeit than they ever would have from winning a state championship.  At least I hope so.  I’m almost positive they’ve earned the respect of their opponents-to-have-been, Grimsley High School.  The Grimsley folks are probably sitting at home splitting time between wondering whether or not they would have done the same thing and looking forward to the state championship next week.  That’s what I’d be doing.