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Clocked Out
Softball Lady Vols stun-gunned by the NCAA
by Tony Basilio
The treatment of the University of Tennessee Lady Vols softball team at last week’s regional play-offs provided incontrovertible proof that the NCAA needs to be stopped, and now. Existing in its own insulated sphere, the organization operates with no checks and balances, and offers no explanations when its capricious mandates run afoul of sane practice and fair play.
What happened at the regionals was unconscionable. Trailing 3-0 in the 6th inning of a Friday afternoon game with Oregon State in the pouring rain, the Lady Vols were told the game would halt and resume at 9 a.m. the next day. Come Saturday, they awakened at 5:30 a.m., and arrived two hours later at a field that was still unplayable, ravaged and muddy from the Friday downpour. Lady Vols co-head coach Ralph Weekly called the playing conditions “the worst I’ve seen.”
According to Weekly, this was evident to everyone except the officials in charge of the tournament. “They kept telling us we could start on time, but I knew it was never going to happen,” he said. “Instead of facing up to the fact that the field was in terrible condition and pushing the game back until 2 p.m., they put us on standby. We missed an opportunity to send our players back to the hotel and take a long nap.”
The game finally resumed at 3 p.m. Weekly’s players were unable to come back, and the defeat dropped them into the losers’ bracket of the double elimination tourney. The Lady Vols’ next game was set for 7 that evening, a contest that was to be their last until at least the following day.
But inexplicably, tourney organizers recanted and forced the ladies to begin yet another game—their third in less than a day—with the stroke of midnight only minutes away.
Reporter Mike Griffith of the News Sentinel recounted the story this way: “[We got] word from tourney officials that the Michigan-Oregon State game was taking too long to play. They said that if that game wasn’t over by 11:30 that it would be too late to play another one. Then the cut-off time became 11:40. Then it became 11:43... We all assumed that it was too late. Then an official notified us that the on-site clock wasn’t in sync with the official NCAA clock... they hurried both teams out, went through a quick warm-up and played a bizarre, early morning game. It’s the strangest thing I’ve seen in sports.”
The result, however, was predictable. With one starting pitcher out sick and another overworked, the tired Lady Vols took the field for the third time in nine hours and lost. Adding insult to injury, most of the field staff went home before the game began.“They all just left,” Weekly said. “I was asking a couple of folks where you going? They said ‘Hey, it’s midnight. Our day is over.’ I couldn’t believe it. The only people who stayed around were the umpires and the groundskeeper.
“They didn’t even keep the hospitality area open for our players or support staff. The only drinks we had were what was in our dugout. Everyone just left us there. I overheard one of the hospitality personnel say, ‘We didn’t know there was going to be another game.’ There was no pre-game water, Gatorade or anything. They all just left. It was us and our fans in the middle of the night.”
When quizzed later about the clock and the discrepancy with the on-site time, NCAA Director of Championships Sharon Cessna was puzzled. “We don’t have an official clock here [at NCAA Headquarters]. So I don’t really know what you are talking about. They called me here, and I made the decision over the phone in conjunction with those on site to let the game begin,” Cessna said. “We never gave anyone a cut-off time at which the game would be pushed until the next day.”
But though her response would seem to indicate that tournament officials made grave errors in both judgment and communication, Cessna offered little sympathy for the shoddy treatment afforded the squad.
“Student-athlete welfare is always foremost in our minds,” she said. “[But] there is nothing we could’ve done. We felt we were in the time frame that we had to be in to complete the tourney on Sunday. Our [NCAA] policy is that teams can begin games before midnight.” As to the behavior of the wayward field personnel who departed before Saturday’s final game had been played, Cessna would only say that, “I don’t want to comment one way or another since I wasn’t present, but we will look into this.”
It’s fitting to note that even after the Lady Vols were subjected to sleep deprivation treatment, the regionals still finished behind schedule, as Michigan beat Oregon State in a final delayed until Monday. The Lady Vols could have played what turned out to be their last game on Sunday without unnecessarily prolonging the tournament. But don’t wait for the NCAA to apologize. There’s no saying you’re sorry when you’ve never been wrong.
Tune in and talk sports with “The Tony Basilio Show” each weekday from 3-6 p.m. on the network (670 WMTY-AM, 850 WKVL-AM, 1140 WLOD-AM, 1290 WATO-AM, or 1400 WGAP-AM)
June 3, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 23
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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