H.E. Charles parents upset over football tiebreaker

An H.E. Charles Middle School parent emailed ABC-7 this week.

His son plays on the 7th grade football team, which lost only 1 game this season, but won’t be in the playoffs after the El Paso Independent School District ruled an undefeated team with two ties should go instead.

The disagreement arises in how won-loss records are interpreted. The team with the best record goes to the playoffs. But not everyone agrees on how that’s calculated.

“They’ve had a great year and we’re real proud of the coaches and everything at H.E. Charles,” said Suzano Carrillo, whose son Isaiah plays for H.E. Charles and was hoping that great year would put the Chargers in the championship. “We go to the handbook, what EPISD goes by, and it states there that it’s the team with the better won and loss record. So when we go to that, H.E. Charles is 6-1 and Armendariz is undefeated (5-0-2), but they only have five wins. So those ties are really going to hurt them in the long run. But then what we’re told is that those ties were added and they gave Armendariz one win and one loss.”

That move by the district made both schools 6-1 and co-champs. And since Armendariz beat H.E. Charles 32-26, the district determined Armendariz advances.

“If we can find that written in the books and manuals then we would understand, ‘Hey, we all knew about it in the beginning of the year,” Carrillo said. “But it’s nowhere written.”

EPISD Athletic Director Ken Owen admitted the rule isn’t written.

“But this has come up before,” Owen said. “We applied a rule we’ve used in other situations like this. We as a district represent all the schools and try to apply rules fairly. We feel like this is a fair way to apply it.”

Carrillo and other parents wrote numerous letters to the district superintendent and the athletic director. Their concern is that H.E. Charles may have not only played its last football game for this year, but since the school has been targeted for possible consolidation by EPISD, it may have played its last football game of all-time.

“You could chalk it up and say, ‘We’ll worry about it next year. We’ll get em next year. We’ll play harder next year.’ For us, there might not be a next year. I think it was EPISD that dropped the ball on the clarity of the issue. Don’t punish the boys.”

Owen promised to make sure the rule about ties is part of next year’s rule book.

Armendariz Coach Gustavo Hernandez said his team is excited about advancing.

“The decisions are made by the district and we just follow them,” Hernandez said. “We’re grateful for the opportunity. It’s been 13 years since our school has been represented at this level.”

Armendariz faces Hornedo at 9 a.m. Saturday at Austin High School for the 7th grade championship.