Two Maryland football programs that entered the fall with real state-title ambitions will open the season under a cloud.
North Point and Westlake are both set to take the field Friday, but both teams will forfeit their Week 1 games because of what their head coaches said were out-of-season violations. North Point coach Bill Condo addressed the situation in an email to the school community earlier this week, while Westlake coach DaLawn Parrish had already informed his team.
A third Charles County school was also originally told to forfeit its opener, but its coach told HS on SI that the school won an appeal and will not have to give up the game.
Even with the forfeits in place, North Point is still scheduled to visit McDonough, and Westlake is still slated to travel to Patuxent. Condo and Parrish both said their teams must play the games anyway.
If one of those teams wins on the field, the official result will still go down as a forfeit loss. If the team loses, the game result will stand, since the forfeit has already been assessed.
In Condo’s email to the North Point community, he said the violation involved “participation in a non-school team setting that exceeded the allowable 80% threshold of returning players under the supervision of contracted coaches during a restricted period outside of the defined sports season.”
Attempts to get confirmation and clarification from the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association were not successful. A phone message left Wednesday went unanswered, and a call Thursday to the Charles County supervisor of athletics also was not returned.
The timing makes the punishment sting a little less in the standings, at least on paper, because every MPSSAA school qualifies for the postseason. Still, a Week 1 forfeit can matter for seeding.
North Point is viewed as one of the state’s top public-school teams and is expected to chase the Class 3A-4A championship. Westlake, after reaching the state semifinals in 2024, is expected to be in the mix for a Class 2A playoff spot.
North Point has already lived through this kind of headache. Last season, the school was forced to forfeit seven regular-season wins because of a different violation, turning a perfect season into a 2-7 record. Even then, the program still made the state quarterfinals, entering as the lowest seed before losing to Sherwood, which finished as the state runner-up.
The matchup with McDonough would have been one North Point was expected to handle comfortably. The Cougars beat McDonough 34-0 last season, though that result was later forfeited.
Westlake’s opener against Patuxent carries more intrigue. Westlake is coming off a season that ended with a regional playoff loss to league rival Northern-Calvert, the eventual Class 2A state runner-up.
Patuxent won the Class 1A state championship last year and is considered one of the favorites to repeat. Patuxent also beat Westlake 34-27 in last season’s Week 1 meeting.
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