A group of irate parents Monday

put Fayette County School System officials between a rock Flat Rock, to

be exact and a hard place.

Some moms and dads of Flat

Rock Middle School football players asked Superintendent John DeCotis

to stop all county middle schools from postseason play if a dispute regarding

playoff status could not be resolved properly.

More than a dozen parents attended

a special meeting with DeCotis and other school officials Monday after

their team was left out of the playoffs and their appeal was denied by

the Metro Middle School Athletic League. They contend that the league

bylaws were not followed correctly and their school should be in the playoffs,

and they also raised conflict-of-interest questions after a Rising Starr

administrator took part in the appeal hearing and subsequent denial.

After talking to the parents,

DeCotis met Tuesday morning with MMSAL commissioner Jason Byars and the

principals of Flat Rock, Rising Starr and Fayette Middle. According to

Wayne Robinson of the school system, DeCotis asked if it would be possible

for the league to have an emergency meeting Tuesday night, and Byars indicated

that the league would attempt to do so.

(This edition of The Citizen

went to press Tuesday afternoon. Check www.thecitizennews.com for

a report on the results from the meeting.)

Fayette County's five public

middle schools compete in the West region of the MMSAL. The East region

is made up of the six Henry County middle schools.

Flat Rock, Rising Starr and

Fayette Middle each finished the 2001 football season with 3-1 records

in region play. The first tiebreaker, head-to-head competition, was moot

since all three teams split between each other at 1-1.

The second tiebreaker is where

it starts to get murky. After games are scheduled between all teams within

their respective counties, additional games must be scheduled to fill

out the six-game schedule. Teams cannot play everyone in the entire league

because middle schools, by state school board law, can only play 60 percent

of a high school schedule, which is six games in a football season, not

counting playoffs.

The matchups for those extra

games one for each Henry County school and two for each Fayette County

school are determined by a blind draw, so the league does not count those

games toward the region standings. The nonregion games are played at the

beginning of the season.

This fall, Fayette Middle and

Flat Rock played a regular region game as well as a nonregion game determined

same record as Rising Starr. Fayette Middle finished 3-3.

For the second tiebreaker,

league bylaws dictate that the "record against common league opponents"

is used. The interpretation of this rule has led to some controversy.

League officials only counted

the remaining region games, against Booth and Whitewater, which all three

schools defeated. Flat Rock parents said Monday that the entire season

record should be considered, since all games are against schools within

the league, even if everybody doesn't play everybody. They also said that,

under any interpretation, the extra Fayette-Flat Rock game should be considered.

DeCotis began the meeting Monday

league, which is formed and operated by participating coaches and other

officials and is autonomous. As the meeting went on, however, he did express

his concern about the confusion being caused and the controversy that

has resulted.

No MMSAL officials were present

at the meeting. Byars, who works at Whitewater Middle, was out of school

Monday, according to Robinson, who was at the meeting in his capacity

as head of secondary school operations.

Some parents expressed frustration

at Byars' absence, as well as that of Jeff Patterson of Rising Starr,

who along with Byars was part of the three-person committee that heard

the appeal last Friday. The parents said that Patterson should not have

participated since the denial helped Rising Starr, who lost to Flat Rock

during the regular season, move from the second seed to the top seed in

the region.

"He [Patterson] told me

he would not be at this meeting unless you ordered him to," one parent

told DeCotis and Robinson.

The coin toss that ultimately

determined the standings was made at an Oct. 15 league meeting, before

the regular season was over. Robinson said that he was told the move was

made because Fayette had a bye the final week of the season and needed

to know if they should continue practicing in case they might get into

the playoffs. Robinson, a former high school coach and athletic director,

added that such moves are common at the high school level due to the difficulty

of various committees getting together repeatedly throughout the season.

In her official letter to Byars

asking for an appeal, Flat Rock assistant principal and athletic director

Audrey Toney said that the early coin toss was done "in spite of

my verbal objection...we regarded the coin toss as a contingency solution,

not the final selection of teams entitled to playoff berths." Toney's

letter was dated Friday.

Robinson, who said repeatedly

that he was simply relaying the information as he heard it, said that

he was told all coaches and representatives at the meeting has no problem

with the decision. That statement was met with derision from the Flat

Rock parents.

After the coin toss, Byars

sent an e-mail, dated Oct. 18, to a large number of league officials saying

that a review of previous league policy led him to change the situation.

He cited a spring 2000 meeting at which football coaches changed the tiebreaker

system to include the entire six-game record after head-to-head competition

is factored in. This new system was not made a part of the bylaws, which

were last revised in 1998.

"Based on this information,

I must rescind the decision to do a coin flip that was discussed at the

Oct. 15 meeting," the e-mail read. "...Rising Starr and Flat

Rock will proceed to the playoffs with Flat Rock being the number-one

seed due to head-to-head competition."

Flat Rock coaches and parents

told their players that they were in the playoffs, they said Monday, based

on this communication. They did not find out until later that Byars changed

his mind again and upheld the coin toss, they said.

"We expect our children

to follow rules and guidelines of the school system," said Ray Swann,

who served as the spokesman for the parents throughout most of the meeting.

"We expect our administrators and commissioners to follow the rules

also. This is more than a playoff game; it shows the integrity of the

system."

Robinson said after the meeting

that he had absolutely no doubt about the integrity of Byars and Patterson.

He told the parents during the meeting, however, that he felt the tiebreaker

system did not make sense in some areas and the bylaws should be rewritten.

Swann acknowledged the school

system's lack of jurisdiction over the league, but he challenged DeCotis,

on behalf of the parents, to take whatever necessary steps he could take,

such as ordering the suspension of postseason play for all Fayette County

middle schools if the league did not resolve the situation properly.

"If we don't stand up

and do the right thing, we don't have a right to look our children in

the face the next time they mess up," said Swann.

DeCotis, although pressured

repeatedly by several parents at the meeting, would not make an immediate

decision. He said the suspension of play in Fayette was "a possibility,"

but he would make certain whether that was a decision he could make or

one that required a special Board of Education meeting.

"We've got a lot of information

and questions that we need answers to," DeCotis told the parents,

adding that he would strive to have a decision by Tuesday morning, since

playoff games were scheduled to start Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Flat Rock parents

left the meeting to plan their next move and assemble the players so they

could resume practice, which was not held Monday, in anticipation of a

reversal that would allow them to play this week.

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