By Maurice Patton
As impressive as Columbia State’s opening-round TCCAA/Region VII baseball tournament performance was Monday, the following day was as inspiring, if not more so.
The Chargers’ last win of the season, an 8-6 victory over nationally No. 2-ranked Walters State, will officially be recorded as a 1-0 loss.
C-State had to forfeit the contest once veteran coach Mike Corn became aware that one of his players was academically ineligible after dropping a class earlier in the spring semester, a move that left him short of the 12 credit hours required for full-time enrollment status.
“That’s something he does, something all our coaches do,” Columbia State athletics director Johnny Littrell said Wednesday. “We graduated Saturday. It’s nothing unusual that the grades get posted the following Monday or Tuesday. Even when I coached, I did the same thing: I’d always check my grades to see who’s eligible, who you’re going to bring back – thinking ahead. That’s what he was doing. He’s checking his grades and ran into that, and it caught him off guard.
“It was just a math thing. The kid had five classes, a total of 14 hours. For some reason, he thought when he dropped one, he still had four classes. Most classes are three (credit) hours. He just did the math in his head that he still had 12 hours. The math just didn’t work. It was an accident.”
Columbia State advanced into the postseason after finishing third in the TCCAA West Division – the 10-team conference competed in divisions this year because of the coronavirus pandemic – and defeated No. 2 division finisher Volunteer State in a best-of-3 series to earn a spot in the four-team state tourney.
The Chargers finished the regular season with a flourish, winning seven straight to close, then dropped their opener to the host Pioneers before winning the final two games to set up Monday’s matchup with perennial power Walters State.
“A whole lot of credit (for) integrity and strong ethics goes to Coach Corn,” TCCAA Commissioner Foster Chason said. “ … it was just something he caught and self-reported. All the other coaches in the tournament were disappointed. Columbia State had earned the right to be there, played a great game in beating Walters to be able to be in the winners bracket.
“I and Bobby (Hudson, Vol State AD and tournament director) and the other coaches involved, it was a time period of sadness and regret for the team that had done so well and accomplished all they had so far.”
Chason said that, had the development not been immediately reported, an academic audit as teams progress in the postseason to the district and national level would have eventually revealed the issue. However, because it was reported in a timely fashion, the conference was able to modify and minimize the impact.
“The remainder of the tournament became more fair,” he said. “We were able to make the adjustments to the tournament appropriately.”
After Tuesday’s tourney schedule was delayed, Walters was reinstated to the winners bracket and lost 20-9 to Dyersburg State, which had defeated Motlow State 8-7 on Monday. The Senators and Bucks were scheduled to play an elimination game Wednesday, with the winner to face Dyersburg in the championship with a berth in the NJCAA East Central District Tournament at stake.
C-State officially completed the season with a 25-22 record.
Both Chason and Littrell attributed the eligibility situation, in part, to the pandemic.
“It didn’t help that we’re off campus for classes,” Littrell said. “An instructor might have come up and said ‘so and so just dropped his class’. We’ve had that before; they’ve come up and said something. You run into each other. In this past year, we’ve not had that. The athletes were here, but nobody else was. We’re doing it all online.”
Littrell also said safeguards will be put into place to make a similar situation less likely going forward.
“We’re going to take it out of the kids’ hands and put it into coaches’ hands, to where a kid cannot drop a class without permission from the coaches, being there and doing it,” he said. “A kid has to do it because they have to go into their account, but they won’t have the access code (to alter their class schedule) without the coach’s being there. We’re just trying to look ahead and keep this from happening.
“It’s never happened, that I’m aware of, since I’ve been here and I’m in my 21st year. But I’ve heard of it happening across the state.”
For obvious reasons, Littrell declined to identify the team member.
“We’d never do that,” he said. “He’s got it pretty hard right now. Some players are looking down (at him), that are hurt.
“I know rules are rules and you’ve gotta have ‘em, but it’s just sad that one mistake from one person can hurt so many. But I don’t know what the answer would be.”