Windsor was forced to retroactively forfeit eight high school baseball games just a few days before the playoffs were set to get underway in Colorado. The entire postseason bracket took a significant hit.
Multiple teams were negatively impacted by the Wizards’ mishap.
It will be interesting to see how the high school baseball playoffs shake out with the new seeding. This massive shake up could lead to a lot of “upsets” that are not true to reality.
Windsor was forced to forfeit.
Windsor High School is located in the northern half of the state, just outside of Fort Collins. It enrolls 1,105 students in Grades 9-12.
The Wizards finished the regular season as the No. 9 team in CHSAA’s Class 4A with a record of 17-6. They were right on the edge to potentially be named as of the eight regional hosts in the playoffs.
Not anymore!
Windsor had one of its players ruled as ineligible on May 11. And because he played in multiple games throughout the season, his team was required to forfeit eight games that had previously been wins.
“We became aware last week that we had an academic ineligibility with one of our players,” AD Eric Johnson told the Coloradoan. “In the process of reporting that to our district and CHSAA, the ruling was that we needed to forfeit any contests that we won while that individual played for the team.”
The Wizards dropped from 17-6 to 9-14. They dropped all of the way to No. 32 in the rankings. Only 32 teams make the 4A field. The “completely unintentional administrative oversight” nearly cost them a spot in the playoffs.
CHSAA did not identified the ineligible player. Nor did the school. It remains unclear as to whether he was a significant contributor in the eight wins that were vacated or if Windsor would’ve won without him. Either way, his presence on the field during those games resulted in eight retroactive losses.
The Colorado high school baseball playoffs are all shook up.
Windsor is not the only high school baseball team to be impacted by the ineligible player ruling. The Wizards will now be listed as a much lower seed than perhaps they deserve, which puts their early-round opponents at a major disadvantage. They will be forced to play a much better team than its seeding.
And then there is league play.
Rocky Mountain originally won the Northern Conference championship at 10-2. That is no longer true.
Windsor was forced to forfeit one of its wins over Fort Collins Lambkins. Lambkins had its record improve from 9-3 to 10-2 because of the forfeiture. Lambkins defeated Rocky Mountain twice during the regular season. As a result, now that they both have 10-2 records and Lambkins defeated Rocky Mountain, Lambkins holds the head-to-head tiebreaker over Rocky Mountain to win the conference championship.
It gets even worse for Rocky Mountain. Windsor’s forfeit-induced record adjustment took a serious hit on Rocky Mountain’s RPI. Rocky Mountain’s two wins over Windsor are now of less value.
In turn, the Lobos slid from No. 7 to No. 9 in the CHSAA’s Class 5A seeding index. Only the top eight teams get to host a regional so they are now more likely to play on the road in the first round. That wouldn’t’ve been the case if the Wizards were not forced to forfeit. Brutal.