Early Deadline Leaves School Without Walls Baseball in the Cold

Today's D.C. Baseball Classic at Nationals Park was intended to include a matchup of the top two baseball teams in the D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Association.

But the four-team tournament, billed as a city championship, will include McKinley and not School Without Walls, even though School Without Walls won the teams' meeting Thursday in the DCIAA semifinals.

School Without Walls will play Wilson, the 15-time defending DCIAA champion, on Tuesday in the league title game, but its players will be relegated to watching from the stands if they choose to attend the Classic.

Because event organizers set a May 16 deadline for the D.C. Baseball Classic teams to be set, DCIAA interim athletic director Pat Briscoe chose the two division leaders at the time to represent the league: Wilson from the West and McKinley from the East. School Without Walls, a public charter school without athletic facilities, was second to Wilson in the West Division.

Briscoe said organizers "had to do media packets and get everything geared up for television. They couldn't wait for our playoffs to determine our champion. It's their game, and we're invited to play. We had to follow their guidelines."

Had Wilson and McKinley advanced to the DCIAA final, today's 12:30 p.m. game between the teams also would have counted as the league championship game. (Top-ranked St. Albans and Maret play at 9:30 a.m. in the private school title game, with the winners advancing to the 7 p.m. final.) Instead, because School Without Walls beat McKinley on Thursday, 8-5, it will play Wilson for the league title on Tuesday at Banneker Recreation Center.

Penguins Coach Toby Madison yesterday confirmed that Briscoe announced at a league coaches' meeting two weeks ago that Wilson and McKinley would play in today's event. Still, parents of several SWW players and students are angry that their team will not get to play at the new $611 million stadium yet hopeful that Tuesday's game would be moved there before the Nationals' 7 p.m. game against the St. Louis Cardinals.

"To me, Saturday's game becomes empty," said Shad Ewart, whose son, Max, plays for School Without Walls.

"Is [the selection process] perfect? Have we somehow cheated School Without Walls? I can't answer that," event organizer Henry Champ said. "On regular season play, the answer is no. But in this one game, the answer is yes."

Champ said that when event organizers review this year's games, the selection process will be discussed.

McKinley won't be fully represented on the diamond at Nationals Park, either. Coach Cornell Simms and one of his players were ejected from Thursday's loss, rulings that carry mandatory one-game suspensions, according to DCIAA policies.

"They are very upset about this," D.C. public schools spokeswoman Mafara Hobson said. "But those are the rules."