Six Paradise players are suspended for next playoff game
The unbeaten Paradise High School football team will have to play its next postseason game without a halfdozen players who were suspended Tuesday by the Northern Section for their participation in an onfield altercation in last week’s game.
In a story first reported by Rick Silva of the Paradise Post, four players are suspended for having left the bench and gone on the field after the thirdquarter incident during Paradise’s 560 rout of Live Oak (Sutter County). Another is being punished for “his actions at the bottom of the pileup” and a sixth was one of two players, one from each team, ejected from the game at the time of the incident.
Northern Section Commissioner Elizabeth Kyle informed Paradise of the discipline in a letter to Paradise principal Michael Ervin on Tuesday. In the letter, Kyle cited Northern Section bylaw 503.3, which says any player who leaves the bench during a fight is suspended for the rest of that game and the “subsequent ... contests.”
She then cited California Interscholastic Federation Bylaw 22 C, which gives section commissioners the power to suspend “any member school for the violation of any CIF or Section rules or regulations.”
Paradise, according to the Post, is appealing the suspensions.
The fourthseeded Bobcats (110) will play a Division 3 section semifinal game Friday against topseeded West ValleyCottonwood (110).
Paradise Unified School District Superintendent Michelle John, in a statement to the Post, wrote: “I totally support suspension for any team player who ‘throws a punch’ at another player or otherwise engages in unsportsmanlike behavior.” But she said that none of the players had engaged in such activity and that she considered the punishment too severe.
Paradise, a 10time section champion, is in pursuit of its first state championship. The day before it was supposed to play its first postseason game in 2018, the Camp Fire broke out and destroyed most of the town. Team and school officials withdrew from the section playoffs immediately, and this year’s team and its success have become a rallying point for the heavily scarred Butte County community.