FRANKLIN — The MIAA has denied the request of Bishop Fenwick High School asking the MIAA to reconsider its decision to ban the school from participating in postseason tournament play during the 2023-2024 school year.
Fenwick President Tom Nunan, Jr. said in a letter to the Fenwick community the day after Monday’s MIAA ruling that the school’s “full board” planned to discuss the matter Thursday and that school officials will “also be meeting with our legal counsel and our administrative team. We will be considering the options available to us, recognizing that the health and well-being of our students and the integrity and success of our school are the top priorities.”
Nunan said the MIAA’s decision is “incredibly disappointing (and) it is also grossly unjust, saying Fenwick’s administration “has accepted responsibility” (and) “we have complied with all the MIAA rulings in these specific matters.”
The MIAA informed the school in a letter dated Aug. 21 that the MIAA Board of Directors met in executive session on Aug. 8 to consider Fenwick’s request, which had been submitted to the MIAA in a letter dated Aug. 7.MIAA directors voted unanimously to deny the request and stick by its original sanctions imposed by the MIAA after it determined that Fenwick had violated Rule 87.6, the so-called accountability rule.
The denial letter, written by MIAA Executive Director Robert Baldwin, took issue with Fenwick’s decision not to address “contradictory and inconsistent factual information” at two Eligibility Appeals Board (EAB) hearings and during an April 8 hearing before the EAB. Baldwin also based the denial on the fact that Fenwick has not introduced any new evidence and Fenwick has failed to acknowledge the multiple manifestations of its prior misconduct and, it continues to mischaracterize and minimize its past conduct.
“Instead of addressing the contradictory and inconsistent factual information as requested, Fenwick chose to ignore that request and continued to defend its actions,” Baldwin stated. “It was not until the Aug. 7 letter after it received the June 8, 2023 notice of discipline and the input from its school community that Bishop Fenwick took accountability for some of its actions and rule violations. By this course of conduct, Bishop Fenwick failed in its accountability obligation under Rule 87.6.”
Baldwin addressed two specific rules violations, one involving a fifth-year waiver request and the other involving “the displacement of a senior” by a seventh-grade student at St. Mary’s Annunciation.”
Regarding the fifth-year waiver, Baldwin found fault with the fact that Fenwick “only takes responsibility for the two errors” that the MIAA singled out “while blaming them on a former principal and athletic director.”
“Absent is any accountability for its actions and omissions during the hearings,” Baldwin wrote.
Regarding the St. Mary’s student situation, Baldwin wrote that while Fenwick accepted responsibility, it clung to its position that it was an “honest misunderstanding.”
“The inescapable conclusion therefore is that Bishop Fenwick did not take accountability for its conduct and rule compliance as it does not make a clear and unequivocal, explicit statement or institutional acceptance of compliance with all of MIAA’s rules and provide a full and unqualified assurance of future compliance as required of all members,” Baldwin wrote.
Fenwick took a different position.
“Our Fenwick administration has taken responsibility for the errors in the identified waiver application and in the misunderstanding of the partnership with St. Mary’s (Danvers),” Nunan said. “We have apologized to the MIAA’s Board of Directors numerous times, both in person and in writing, noting our remorse for the violations cited. We have outlined our plans for how our school and our administration will ensure compliance with MIAA rules and regulations going forward.”
Baldwin stated Fenwick asked that the MIAA consider the serious implications the sanction has on its students. While the MIAA acknowledged that those implications are always “paramount” for the MIAA, it nonetheless was “mindful of the fact that the nature of the rules violations involved include Fenwick’s silence during the EAB hearing when the student-athlete failed to state that he was a pitcher, even though he had been named Bishop Fenwick’s Pitcher of the Year, and, in another situation, allowed a seventh-grade student to displace a senior.”
In addition to denying Fenwick’s request for reconsideration, the MIAA provided responses to three questions Fenwick put forth in the Aug. 7 request. First, while the postseason ban does not apply to co-op teams hosted by other schools, Fenwick students who are members of those teams will not be eligible to participate in postseason play in 2023–2024.
Baldwin also cautioned Fenwick “to not apply blanket denials to any Form 200 that comes to it, as the Form 200s are fact specific and each student’s reason for transferring may be different.”
Form 200 must be completed by both the sending and receiving schools when student-athletes change schools. It requires the sending school’s athletic director and principal to certify that the student-athlete was not recruited, that they have no knowledge that the transfer was for athletic reasons, and other conditions and certifications by both sending and receiving schools.
In the Aug. 22 letter to the Fenwick’s community, Nunan condemned the decision of the MIAA and said he cannot “cannot fathom who such a measure (the MIAA postseason ban) is reasonable, appropriate or fair.
“The MIAA has chosen to punish our entire community by precluding all student-athletes in our 24 varsity athletic programs from postseason competition for the entire 2023-24 academic year,” Nunan said.” “We have yet to hear of such a sweeping, stark sanction for any infraction, of any size or severity, by any school or team, at any time in recent history.”
“We have outlined our plans for how our school and our administration will ensure compliance with MIAA rules and regulations going forward.”
