The DePauw field hockey team (15-1, 12-0 NCAC) was preparing for a matchup with defending NCAC champions, Wittenberg College (9-7, 7-5 NCAC) on Tuesday when head coach Gina Preston, along with the conference office, was informed by Wittenberg's head coach Kelley Hubbell that the game could not take place.
According to sources within DePauw's athletic department, eight players on Wittenberg's team were suspended. The suspensions depleted the roster to such a significant extent that Wittenberg would not have been able to field a team for Wednesday's game against DePauw. Calls from The DePauw to coach Hubbell were not returned.
As a result, neither DePauw's record in the conference nor its overall record were affected in face value. According to the NCAA, a forfeit is defined as an instance when two teams take to the field and one team declares a forfeit after the game has started. The NCAA, therefore, views the cancelled game between DePauw and Wittenberg as a "no contest," which does not show up on DePauw's or Wittenberg's overall record.
In the NCAC, the game counts as a win for DePauw and a loss for Wittenberg for conference seeding purposes only. Executive director of the NCAC Keri Luchowski said the situation was extremely rare, and the conference believes it was handled fairly.
"For our purposes, this is a disciplinary matter for one of our schools," Luchowski said. "In talking to Wittenberg, they let us know that they had an issue which they were dealing with internally. But to make DePauw travel and pay the expense just so you can start a game knowing it would not finish didn't seem like a good use of resources."
According to Luchowski, for the NCAC standings, it was critical that the method of dealing with the situation fairly affected the entire conference.
"This is pretty rare," Luchowski said. "We've had some forfeits in the past for other reasons, but this is unusual, and that makes it harder to deal with."
DePauw was ranked for the first time this year on Wednesday, breaking into the national coaches' poll at No. 20. Although the team has won its past 15 games and is leading the conference with a perfect 12-0 record, according to head coach Gina Preston, the team members were very disappointed.
"They were disappointed at first just because they are very competitive," Preston said. "Overall, I hope that not playing won't affect us in the greater picture. For us, we need to take care of things we can control on our end."
Although the Tigers have their eyes set on winning the conference championship and claiming an automatic bid to the NCAA Div. III playoffs, Preston hopes the "no contest" will not affect her team later if it is unable to clinch the conference.
With the cancellation of Wednesday's game, DePauw was able to hold an extra practice in preparation for the team's final regular season game of the season against Denison University (15-1, 12-1 NCAC).
"We were able to move forward in practice for the game against Denison, so that will be helpful," Preston said.