Beach High’s girls basketball team, the 2020 Class 3A runner-up, won’t play in the state tournament this year because of a fight occurring after Thursday night’s game with Savannah that resulted in their school district shutting down both teams, WJCL-TV in Savannah first reported Friday morning.
The Savannah Morning News later confirmed the news, citing Ann Levett, the superintendent of Savannah-Chatham Schools
‘‘The incident Thursday evening was inappropriate and does not represent the high standards the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System expects its student athletes to uphold,’' Levett said in a statement.
Beach beat Savannah 50-35 in the Region 3-3A tournament semifinals but was made to forfeit the championship game. Johnson of Savannah, the other region finalist, was declared the champion. WJCL reported that Liberty County would be the region’s No. 2 seed and that the other two region playoff berths would be left vacant.
Beach is 11-3 overall, 6-0 in region play, and ranked No. 9 in Class 3A. Now, Beach’s 18-season streak of reaching the state tournament, one of the longest in the state, is potentially over. Beach won the Class 3A championship in 2017.
Savannah’s record is 7-9 overall and 4-4 in the region. The team would’ve qualified for state this year as a No. 3 or No. 4 seed.
The Georgia High School Association confirmed to the AJC that it had fined both schools and placed each on warning status but left the decision about state-playoff participation to the school district. Levett said that the GHSA’s rules on fighting wouldn’t leave either with enough players to complete for the next two games.
The state tournament begins Tuesday. The top four teams in each of Georgia’s 64 regions qualify across eight classifications.
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