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Just hours before Achiever Academy's girls high school hockey team was to play in the Section 4A championship game against St. Paul United for a berth in the state high school hockey tournament, the school announced that they would be withdrawing fro the playoffs.
Achiever Academy made the decision after an anonymous email was sent to the MSHSL, as well as multiple coaches around the state, questioning the eligibility of certain members of the Achiever Academy team. According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, here is what the email contained:
Player eligibility questions intensified Tuesday when the league forwarded Achiever an unsigned e-mail listing seven players’ names and information from Internet searching, including property records and screenshots of girls’ Twitter accounts.
The e-mail, obtained by the Star Tribune, cited players being ineligible either because parents lived out of state or families did not relocate when players transferred to Achiever, based in Vadnais Heights. The e-mail suggested that one player recently moved out of state.
Achiever Academy is relatively new to the Minnesota high school scene, and their intense focus on athletics has been controversial. It's a shame to see their season end this way, though rules are rules, even if the MSHSL's rules on transfers have been proven many times over to be fairly malleable. And I've been as critical as anyone about private school playing with what are essentially AAA teams in Minnesota's smaller division for hockey.
But still, this is what we've come to? Digging through property records and Twitter-stalking high school girls? I think most would agree that's shameful bevaior--including the sender of the email, who chose not to attach his/her own name to it.
