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Lady Buff Salem Wood helped the women’s soccer team to finish strong this season. Milligan received the Appalachian Athletic Conference title this year. |
-Photo by Jason Harville |
The Milligan women’s soccer team received the Appalachian Athletic Conference regular season championship and Covenant College received the AAC tournament championship after the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics stripped nationally ranked Union College of its titles.
The forfeit
According to Union’s website, the team was forced to forfeit seven of its regular season games and three of its conference tournament games after the NAIA discovered “the inadvertent use of an ineligible player.” The
player’s name was unavailable.
Prior to NAIA’s ruling, Union posted a season record of 14-0-2 according to the NAIA. After the forfeit, Union’s regular season record was changed to 8-7-1 and the conference record was changed to 6-2-1, according to
Union.
The competitor
“Unbeknownst to Union, she had played three years in Brazil and one year at Mid-America before coming to Union,” said Milligan coach Marty Shirley. “Although Union had the responsibility to check the player’s background, the young woman and Mid-America were also responsible for letting Union know about her previous years of college level play.”
The cost
Shirley said the forfeit of games gave his team a one-win advantage over Union in the AAC. NAIA, however, did not discover the situation until two days prior to the regional tournament.
If the problem had been found earlier, Milligan would have been given a first round bye in the conference tournament and would have hosted the regional tournament.
“As a team, Union is deserving of playing in the national tournament,” said Shirley. “They are a very good team and worthy of a high ranking. However, this incident foreshadows the team and makes it look like they got to the tournament in the wrong manner.”