Northwest Guilford trying to do the right thing

I received this E-mail message earlier this week and it shows that our Guilford County athletic leaders are trying to do the right thing.

Northern Guilford officials are working hard to get things back on track there and the kids in the county are advancing with their spring sports.

The E-mail that came in was in reference to the events associated with the Palomino JV Easter Basesball Tournament and everything pertaining to it was handled in a proper and professional manner.

Here’s that letter that was forwarded my way:

By virtue of a 3-0 record, Northwest Guilford won Bracket II of the JV Easter tournament.

Last week, I received a call from Sonny Gann at NW advising that on Monday, April 13th, they had a player on their roster who was not eligible due to improper enrollment at NW. The mistake was discovered and he was removed from the team and was no longer a team member on the Wed & Thursday games. You will recall that the Tuesday games were rained out.

NW self reported this situation to the NCHSAA resulting in forfeiture of all JV games played thru 4/13. We have declared the game they played against Dudley on the 13th as a win for Dudley with a 1-0 score. This resulted in a 3 way tie with Dudley, NW and Ragsdale all having a 2-1 record.

We could not use a head to head tiebreaker since it was a 3 way tie. Our second tiebreaker was runs allowed. This resulted in Ragsdale being eliminated as they allowed 20 runs over the 2 day event. Dudley and NW both allowed 9 runs so we declared Dudley and NW co-winners of the bracket.

Considering all the negative publicity about High School athletics, I appreciate the phone notification by Coach Gann. I also received confirmation of the situation from John Hughes, AD at NW and feel the ineligiblity of the player was an innocent mistake on the part of personnel at NW.

Good to see some positives coming through the sea of recent negatives and it proves that our county schools are trying to do the right thing and that all of our programs will be stronger in the end and that Northern Guilford, Northwest Guilford, Ragsdale, and Dudley are among the best in the state of North Carolina.