The Long Beach City College men’s soccer team must no longer forfeit its 5-1 victory against LA Harbor College after an appeal revealed that a yellow card was attributed to the wrong player, meaning they did not need to bench the player.
Despite a dominant performance against LA Harbor, the Vikings were forced to forfeit the game for using a player who had accumulated 5 yellow cards, which should have kept him from playing.
This turned out to not be the truth, with head coach Jorge Reyes investigating the incident and revealing that a mistake was made by the refs in attributing a yellow card.
“I went back and watched the film and they attributed the yellow card to the wrong guy, so we are actually conference champs,” Reyes said.
Under conference rules, coaches and staff members have to keep track of how many cards each player receives and who receives it because there is no committee to oversee the cards given.+
Attempts were made to speak to the players about the forfeit and what it meant to them, however those who were approached declined to comment on the situation.
Prior to the appeal that revealed that the refs made a mistake in attributing the yellow card, Reyes insisted that there was no malicious intent behind the error.
“It was an honest mistake,” Reyes said. “It’s not like we’re trying to take advantage of it. Our team is too talented and technically it was a self-report. We were the ones that told the conference you know what, we screwed up.”
With all of this commotion happening around their team, Reyes believes that this will teach his players an important lesson while also showing his confidence in the team’s capability to overcome this setback.
“We want to make sure that the guys know that this is life. Sometimes you make a mistake, you take the consequences and get up the next day and go back to work,” Reyes said. “This group is very businesslike. You can see it in their eyes. It doesn’t matter if it’s only 12 of us playing, if it’s 6 of us playing, they’re ready,”
Despite all the issues that may have appeared through this whole incident, it’s back to work for the Vikings who strive to obtain their first state championship.
“We really want to make a strong push for a state championship and I think we need to be ready for whatever is thrown our way. This was just another hurdle in the road and we move ahead,” Reyes said.
The Vikings’ next game will be against Cerritos College, where they will look to win their first game of the SCC Tournament.
