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The Warsaw girls soccer team is facing a critical time in the season. With a 10-1-2 record, the Tigers are looking to win a conference championship and take momentum into sectional action. But those critical matches just got tougher.
In the Sept. 10 meeting by the IHSAA, 17 Warsaw girls soccer players were suspended for two matches for a rules violation that, according to both athletic director Dave Fulkerson and girls soccer coach Brent Wildman, was not communicated properly to schools after it was changed. Wildman also said that members of the IHSAA admitted that they did not communicate the change correctly.
The rule states that players are not allowed to attend soccer camps after the Monday of week four of the season. This was a change from previous years when players were allowed to attend these camps until week five.
A total of 15 other schools were handed suspensions for the violation, but none of those had more than five players in violation. Fulkerson said that the large number came from a combination of two soccer camps, one at Notre Dame and one at Grace College.
Fulkerson and Wildman were also quick to point out that Warsaw turned themselves in after reading about the suspensions of other players in another newspaper.
"A parent took the article to coach Wildman and he brought it to me," Fulkerson said. "There are probably other schools that are in violation of this rule and don't even know it."
To take care of the games missed, Warsaw canceled a match with Mishawaka Marian to alleviate one game of the suspensions and have been rotating player suspensions and have just two players left that need to sit out a game.
"I would say having two players out of each game has had its effect," Wildman said. "We played some tight games against teams that we should have beaten easier. On senior night, when we had them all, we put on a show and won 10-0. Then we turned around and played a 0-0 tie to a team we should have beaten 5-0."
Wildman went on to talk about how something that could be looked at as a positive, having all of his varsity players attending camps to improve their skills, turned out to be a problem because of the large number of suspensions. If only one or two players had been attending camps, the violations would not have loomed as large.
"Our players are real involved in campus life," Wildman said. "Three of our kids are on homecoming court. These kids really believe in the reward of discipline through athletics. I've got the best group of kids in the school."
