UPPER LAKE — Five members of the Upper Lake High School varsity boys basketball team are facing two-game suspensions for participating in a men’s league game on Thursday night at the Robinson Rancheria gym in Nice.
Upper Lake reported the infraction to the North Coast Section early Friday, according to Mike Smith, Upper Lake High School’s former athletic director and now the principal at Upper Lake Middle School.
“Coach (Justin) Dutcher found out about it earlier today and contacted me right away,” Smith said. “We reported it to the North Coast Section office.”
According to the California Interscholastic Federation Constitution and Bylaws, Section 600, “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.” Under Section 504 governing outside teams, “An outside team is one that is organized through a non-school organization such as, but not limited to, youth teams, community teams, club teams, national teams, park and recreation teams, etc.”
For each game a player participates with an outside team, the penalty is a two-game suspension.
The affected players — Kenny Hodges, Hank Nevarez, Ray Moran, Louis Avalos and Dylan Armstrong, all starters for the Cougars — are scheduled to sit out Saturday’s non-league home game against Mendocino and a Tuesday home league game against Tomales. Had any of those five players participated in a game or games after the rules violation, Upper Lake would have had to forfeit those games and the players involved would still have to serve a two-game suspension, according to Smith.
“As an administrator, I made the final call (to report the violation),” Smith said. “We wanted to follow North Coast Section and CIF rules.”
Smith said he doesn’t believe any of the players involved knew they were breaking the rules, but that doesn’t change the fact that a rule was broken.
“It’s an unfortunate situation,” he said. “We need to do a better job in the future educating them about these types of things. Something like this hasn’t come up before.”
Upper Lake High athletic director Brian Figg was awaiting final word from the section on Friday night, according to Smith, who said the two-game suspensions would go into effect immediately unless the section reduces the penalty.
“I’m assuming it will be two games,” Smith said.
Thursday was the opening night in the men’s league at Robinson Rancheria, according to Smith.
Upper Lake (15-5) is trying to reach the Division V playoffs and had a legitimate shot at winning 20 or more games this season. Additionally, three-year veteran Hodges was on pace to break the county’s single-season scoring record of 710 points, a milestone that may now be out of his reach unless the Cougars advance deep into the postseason.
Looking ahead to Saturday’s game against a Mendocino Cardinals team that beat a full-strength Upper Lake squad 60-50 on Dec. 22 in Mendocino, Dutcher said he’ll call up a handful of junior varsity players to supplement the varsity players he has left.
“I’ll just try and survive against them with what I have,” Dutcher said.
