Expert: Chip Aki - 5/1/2006

Question
My question is a rules questions.
Situation:
Toward the end of the season I injured my shoulder while bowling on the Friday league.
For a couple of weeks a got a sub to cover for me. Then it was obvious that I was not going to be able to bowl any for the rest of the season and actually am being told I will probably not ever to be able to bowl right handed again. Therefore I picked up a replacement bowler. I was informed that I could not use a sub the last 2 weeks of the season. Therefore I had myself removed from the team roster and placed Rob, my replacement, on the roster.
At the time our team was in second place. The team held second until the second from the last week of the regular season.
Going into the 36th week, the last week before championship round we had a 2 game lead. We won the 1st 2 games by a substantial margin and obviously enough to also win total pins.
At this time the 2nd place team lost their 1st game and it was obvious that we were going to win the 2nd half. At this time the league secretary came around and told everybody that they needed one player from every team to stay after bowling and attend a meeting because the 2nd place had filed a protest.
At this protest, the 2nd place team stated that it is the league by-laws that a team could not change their roster outside of 6 weeks before the end of the bowling season.
I was not aware of this, and still assumed that he was placed on the roster within 6 weeks.
However they said “No”, you can't count the last week of bowling because that was championship round?  “SO, it is still a week of our bowling season”
Anyways. They decided to forfeit our last 8 wins, the number won with the replacement, which put us in 3rd place in the protesters in 1st.
Now if this was a problem, why did they allow the change in the roster and why wasn't something said before the last night when they saw they weren't going to win?.
Was this a legal move on their part?
Thank you for whatever info you can supply.
Gary


Answer
I am not an expert on rules, but since the change was made due to an injury, I think you were legal.  If it was a problem, then you should have been told right away.  To make sure, you can go to bowl.com and click on the contact us link and send an email or call the rules department.

We had something similar happen in our friday nite fun league.  It looks like there would not have been a protest if you had not won.

I feel like you were in the right on this.  Sounds a bit shaky to have won the protest that they presented.

Good luck,
Chip