HS Notebook: Mass. power forced to vacate

by Will Parchman

October 24, 2014

Ludlow is an institution in Massachusetts boys soccer. Since its founding, the team’s won a monstrous 17 state championships, and while they’ve been on a recent drought by their standards, the team was presumably in line to challenge for an 18th as the Massachusetts postseason drew closer.

Not this year. Ludlow will have to wait until 2015 for another crack.

Ludlow went 20-1 this season and would’ve been a favorite to win the state title, but on Wednesday the team was forced to vacate nine of its wins due to an ineligible player. The big blow, though, came when the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association ruled in a 13-5 decision to keep Ludlow out of the postseason this year. According to MassLive, the team’s appeal was a teary occasion.

But the board wasn’t swayed. The crux of the issue revolved around a player who had met neither the school’s internal nor the MIAA’s state-wide academic standards, the former of which disqualified a player if they’d received at least one F. The player in question had failed three of his six classes in the previous year and hadn’t made them up in summer school.

Whatever the cause, the result of the ruling stirred emotions in the soccer-mad community. Shortly after the decision came down on Oct. 22, Twitter was flooded with emotional responses, sympathetic well-wishes and concern for the group of seniors who’d ended their careers in a board room instead of on a field. In a soccer community like Ludlow, this episode won’t be forgotten any time soon.

First state titles already meted out

With winter soccer firing up its afterburners for the first time, fall soccer is hitting its postseason stride. While most of the fall’s 30-plus states are still struggling through the playoffs, a select few have already handed out state titles for the first time in the 2014-15 high school calendar. South Dakota was among the first across the finish line earlier this month when Lincoln swept the Class AA boys and girls state titles.

Kentucky’s small schools division wrapped even earlier, with the Collegiate boys taking down Bishop Brossart for the All “A” title in late September. Most of the country is still deciding titles, but among the next states to fall will be Utah, which decided its state title matchups this week, and many of those games ended in dramatic fashion. The nation’s biggest question now is whether FAB 50 boys No. 1 McDonogh can keep its 36-game undefeated streak through the postseason and finish the fall on a heap St. Benedict’s has largely owned over the last half decade.

Coaching gone awry in Kentucky

Coaching is an intense profession. The very nature of it requires a razor-wire balance of firmness and understanding, and it can often be difficult for coaches to seamlessly transition from one to the other in the heat of the moment.

One Kentucky coach apparently knows that all too well.

Alex Shearer coaches the boys soccer team at John Hardin High School in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and his side squared off against heated rival Central Hardin in a recent meeting between the two sides. During halftime of the game, Shearer gathered his team in the corner of the field - the ground’s facilities don’t include locker rooms - and delivered a profanity-laced tirade. Thanks to one Central Hardin fan, who recorded the speech, we know that wasn’t the only thing involved. He also reportedly instructed his players to injure their Central Hardin counterparts.

The story’s gotten mixed response from the community at large. On one hand, the school was lauded for suspending Shearer for the remainder of the season for what was viewed as instruction to take cheap shots at opposing teams. But another faction sees a Central Hardin supporter attempting to scuttle a rival’s season, and a coach simply using old school motivational tactics for his gain.

Whatever the motivation, it was just another episode in a rivalry that went from simmering to explosive in the span of one recording.

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