The Rock River volleyball team has withdrawn from this weekend’s Class 1A East Regional tournament on account of too few girls eligible to play starting Friday. Activities director Ty Vallier confirmed to the Star-Tribune that multiple members of the team are ineligible to participate in games due to code of conduct violations.
“We had a situation that we had it to where we didn’t have enough to field a team for regionals,” Vallier said. “Kind of ineligibilty issues, we had some code of conduct things that happened.”
The Longhorns went 13-9 and finished second in the Class 1A Southeast quadrant thanks to a five-game winning streak entering regional weekend. Instead, Hanna will be the second seed and Glendo will be the third seed from the Southeast at the Class 1A East Regional.
And because the Longhorns will not compete at regionals they are not eligible to play in the state tournament — effectively ending their season. Rock River finished fourth last season.
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“We just had to not go to the regional tournament for volleyball,” Vallier said, “and now look forward to basketball.”
The Longhorns had nine players out to start the year and maintained that number throughout the season. Volleyball has traditionally drawn high participation at Rock River. Vallier said the school gets better participation numbers for volleyball than it does for basketball.
The school’s activities director also insisted that this outcome won’t become commonplace at Rock River.
“We won’t have an issue with girls’ teams going forward,” Vallier said. “It’s a one-time deal that is unfortunate.”