By TERRY NAU

Sports editor

The young people who play football for Woonsocket High School are learning one of life’s hard realities this week. They’re learning that life isn’t always fair.
Woonsocket head coach Carnell Henderson got the news last night that the R.I. Interscholastic League had rejected his school’s appeal of its Division II-A playoff alignment, which had eliminated Woonsocket from a five-way tie for first place and booted the Novans out of the playoffs based on the Football Committee’s interpretation of league rules dealing with tiebreaker situations.
“Very discouraging news,” Henderson said on Monday evening. “It’s tough when you teach kids to follow the rules and then the rules are not followed. I think the committee interpreted the rule wrong. (RIIL Director) Tom Mezzannotte told our principal (Dr. Lourenco Garcia) that the league followed the same rules they have always used in the past but I say this is different. This was a five-way tie for first place. They’ve never had that before. When they went through the rules and seeded West Warwick No. 1, they should not have gone back and reseeded the teams again.
“We beat the team they seeded No. 1, the team they removed from the pool when they reseeded,” Henderson added. “We got penalized for beating the No. 1 team.”

Henderson, a vice principal at the high school, immersed himself last week in the league’s rules and regulations, which are available on the  riil.org website. He found on page 89 that the fifth step in the tiebreaker situation dealt with “total defensive points allowed in the games between the teams involved in the tiebreaker” and felt this scenario should have awarded his team second place among the five playoff contenders.
So the point of conflict comes down to whether Henderson or the league is correct in the way it interpreted the tiebreaker procedure.
“I feel like I’m right,” Henderson said. “I don’t think the league wants to humble itself and say they were wrong. It bothers me that I got a phone call on Sunday at 3 in the afternoon saying we were out of the playoffs when the meeting wasn’t supposed to start until 6 p.m. The league statistician sent out at email to various people at 12:15 in the afternoon, saying these are the playoff pairings, pending approval of the league. And then those pairings turn out to be what the committee came up with.”
Henderson, who grew up in Woonsocket, can appreciate more than most people just how disappointed his players are over this turn of events.
“When you deal with inner city kids, they already get the short end of the stick. They know that because it happens to them all the time,” Henderson said, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t feel like the league did this because it was Woonsocket but these kids read the rules, they’re going to feel like it’s because they’re from Woonsocket. I don’t believe that but the kids believe that.
“I’m these kids’ educational leader,” Henderson added. “I try to teach them real life instructions and I can’t explain this to them. If I can’t give them an answer to why something has happened, then I am lost. I feel like I let them down. My team leaders showed up at my door on Sunday night, asking me ‘Coach, what’s going on?’ I told them these are the cards we’ve been dealt. As a team, we have to get ready for our final two games against Lincoln and Cumberland and try to make the best of it.”
Henderson had one last thing to say.
“We had the happiest bus ride home from Westerly on Friday night after we won the game that should have put us in the playoffs. That was a game our team had to win and we won it. The kids did everything we asked them to do and they still didn’t get into the playoffs.
“I just think the league interpreted the rules the wrong way in the event of a five-way tie,” Henderson concluded. “Nobody did this on purpose. There has never been a five-way tie before.”
The school has one final appeal option due today.
“We are appealing to the Principal’s Committee,” the coach admitted. “That’s the last chance we have to get this right.”