Top Maryland HS basketball team forfeits wins over violation

One of the best high school basketball teams in Maryland had to forfeit its 18-win season for multiple violations of the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association’s (MPSSAA) athletic transfer rules.

The Dr. Henry A. Wise Jr. High School boys’ basketball team had gone 18-2 in the regular season, but an investigation found that several Wise players did not meet the residency requirements.

Various reports state that despite vacating the wins, the team will be able to compete in the MPSSAA 4A basketball tournament.

A recent article from The Defector detailed the violation by the Maryland high school and the reaction from school officials. Below is an excerpt from The Defector article.

A letter addressed to Wise principal Taryn Washington said that a county investigation of the basketball program found multiple violations of athletic transfer rules. The PGCPS document, a copy of which was obtained by Defector Media, said the county athletics office started looking into Wise in late January, after officials “received anonymous notification” that “several players” on the Wise roster didn’t meet residency requirements. Investigators subsequently found players that either didn’t live in the Wise district or hadn’t filed the proper paperwork to prove they belonged. Because of what the county deemed “participation of ineligible players based on non-verification of residency,” every Wise win had officially been changed to a forfeit loss. The team, according to the document, was now assigned an “0-20 season record.” The county athletics office issued a statement with much of the same information that afternoon.

Even with the findings of rule breaking and the related forfeitures, Wise’s season is not over yet. Melissa Nash Mertz, director of compliance and communications for the MPSSAA, told Defector on Tuesday that every public high school in Maryland qualifies for the state tournament. So Wise, suddenly winless and with a cloud of fraud hovering over their heads, still has a shot at glory.

The penalty, however, turned the 4A bracket for P.G. County schools upside down. The forfeits gave every team that lost to Wise this year an extra win (or two for county division rivals), and Wise went from a No. 1 seed to the lowest in the county. Wise is likely the best team ever placed at the bottom of a bracket in the state tournament’s history.

The county did not announce if any players from Wise’s roster will be removed from the team because of the rules violations. Earl Hawkins, director of the athletics office of Prince George’s County Public Schools, did not respond to Defector’s request for comment.

There is at least one personnel casualty, though: Wise head coach Louis Wilson is done for the season. In an interview with WUSA9 after the forfeits were made public, Wilson said he’d been suspended. He said one student had been deemed ineligible, not the “several” cited in the PGCPS letter to Principal Washington, and that the student had been “vetted through the athletic department” at the beginning of the season.

To read the full story from The Defector, click here.