NORTHAMPTON — About a week ago, Northampton Athletic Director Dave Proulx told his school’s head soccer coaches, CJ Holt (boys) and Vanessa Butynski (girls), that he wanted to meet with their teams to deliver unfortunate news to them.

Before the teams’ practice, Proulx gathered everyone at the main soccer field in the stadium at Northampton High School and told them that because of a scheduling omission, both programs would be ineligible to play in their respective Western Massachusetts tournaments set to begin at the end of the month.

This year, every western Mass. athletic director had to put in two games listed as “TBA,” or “to be announced,” at the end of their schedule as placeholders for the PVIAC Western Mass. tournament. Northampton was one of a laundry list of schools who failed to do so. Originally, the punishment for not putting in the games as “TBA” was the disqualification from the Western Mass. tournaments.

However, after the MIAA and PVIAC reached an agreement, those schools were allowed back in the sectional dance, but not without a catch.

For the schools who didn’t meet the scheduling requirement, the games that they play in the Western Mass. tournament will automatically be considered as a 3-0 forfeit loss so long as they play against a school who met the scheduling guidelines. So if Northampton were to win a Western Mass. tournament game, they can advance in the bracket, but the MIAA will consider it a forfeit loss, drastically impacting their state tournament ranking.

“This agreement that the MIAA says it has reached with the PVIAC, it’s sort of more of the same from them where it’s not about the kids,” Holt said. “It’s frustrating.”

The Blue Devils boys team is currently No. 1 in Division 2 (meaning they would host every state tournament game they play in until the Final Four), and the girls team is a perfect 13-0 and hasn’t given up a goal in nearly a month.

With a pair of forfeit losses to each team essentially penciled in already, the boys will likely plummet out of the top spot, and the girls’ (ranked No. 17) chance at a home playoff game decreases exponentially. Because the Northampton girls team’s strength of schedule isn’t great, they need every win they can get. The two forfeits are going to sting both programs.

“I’ve been coaching soccer a long time, so I try to let my kids decide how important things are, because it’s their season,” Holt said. “They’re a young team, and one of the benefits of having a young team is they only care about whatever game is in front of us. We have two tournaments: the Western Mass. sectional and the state tournament. If we’re No. 1 and everybody comes to us, great. If we’re jumping on a bus and it’s a long trip, hopefully Dave can get us a nice bus.”

Holt is the athletic director at Hampshire Regional, so he had to go through the same process himself. He did put the pair of “TBA” games on his teams’ schedules, but he wasn’t aware of the consequences if he weren’t to have done that.

In previous years, there was no punishment for not adding “TBA” to the schedule. Although the PVIAC sent multiple reminders to do it, they never mentioned what would go wrong if that wasn’t completed, according to Holt.

“If I knew there would be a consequence, I talk to Dave every single day, so I would’ve made sure that he put them in, because I know life as an athletic director is tough,” Holt said. “Things come at you unexpectedly from every direction 24 hours a day almost seven days a week… Never once did they mention that this TBA expectation was now tied with a consequence. And [the MIAA and PVIAC] said there were seven reminders. But you know, it doesn't matter how many reminders there were if the the reminders weren't clear.”

Neither Holt nor Butynski put any blame on Proulx because of the confusion of the situation, and because he was only one of many athletic directors in the same boat.

“Dave sort of jumped on the sword and said it was his fault and his mistake, which I know it really wasn’t,” Holt said. “But he just sort of owned it.”

Butynski described her reaction to the news as “gut-wrenching” and “disappointing.” The hard work that her team has put in to climb into the top 20 of the Division 2 rankings is going to be ripped away from them once they’re docked with two forfeits in the Western Mass. tournament; Butynski could see the Blue Devils drop a whopping 15 spots.

But in order to win a state tournament, a team is going to have to take down the top dogs eventually. So the nine-year Northampton head coach is instilling the “in order to be the best, you have to beat the best” mentality with her team.

“I told them about states: ‘Regardless of where we fall, if you guys want to win it, you have to beat everyone anyway,’” Butynski said. “So if you happen to get hit with a harder team at first, so be it. And if we're good enough, and if we want to make a run in the tournament, it really, per se, doesn't matter who you play first – because you're gonna have to go through them all. And yeah, we may have to play a harder team, but they’re going to be surprised because we’ll be ranked low. They’re going to have to play a harder team than they deserve.”

This year marks the fourth year of the new state tournament format. Some rumblings around western Mass. have stated that since the MIAA changed its format, the Western Mass. tournament doesn’t mean anything anymore.

In some ways that’s true, considering winning the sectional tournament is no longer required to play for a state title. But to the student-athletes in the area, holding up the Western Mass. championship trophy is still as important as ever.

“Our kids, my student-athletes, we align with our values in terms of the fact that the Western Mass. sectional is important to us,” Holt said. “We’re happy that we’re able to play those games.”

“We had a goal of getting into the Western Mass. tournament and doing very well there,” Butynski added. “That’s still our goal even with the forfeits. It’s important to my kiddos.”