NFA's Davis will sit one out after suspension

Norwich Free Academy football coach Jemal Davis was suspended one game by his own administration on Monday for violating the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference's score management policy (50-point rule).

Davis will serve the school's self-imposed suspension Saturday when the unbeaten Wildcats visit Bacon Academy.

NFA violated the 50-point policy last Saturday when it defeated Stamford 51-0. The CIAC, the state's governing body of high school athletics, was in the position of taking a similar action against Davis had NFA had not acted itself.

"There was no deliberate intent on the part of the NFA coaching staff to violate CIAC policy," NFA athletic director Gary Makowicki said Monday in a statement released to the media. "The Norwich Free Academy administration, athletic department and coaches value and respect the CIAC and its policies, and take full responsibility for this violation."

Makowicki said NFA contacted CIAC assistant executive director Paul Hoey on Monday "to officially self-report the policy infraction of October 20th and to inform him that NFA would be self-imposing the required policy penalty for the violation."

The CIAC, in a release later Monday, said "the review committee accepted this decision and no further action will be taken."

NFA (6-0) was leading Stamford 49-0 when it blocked a punt that led to a safety with 3 minutes, 25 seconds to play. Stamford coach Bryan Hocter said after the game he was "little annoyed" by that play, as well a fourth-quarter touchdown by starting running back Marcus Outlow that pushed the scored to 49-0.

"At this point in time, I'm not really OK with it," Hocter said after the game. "I thought it was a little classless on his part to do that. ... You can't embarrass a team. I thought (Davis) was trying to embarrass us."

Makowicki reached out to Stamford athletic director Jim Moriarty on Monday morning.

"(Makowicki) told me he didn't like the way the game was handled and they were going to suspend him for a week," Moriarty told the Stamford Advocate. "We are going to accept it on behalf of my principal and me. I thought it was a class move."

Contacted Monday night, Makowicki added, "We support all of the CIAC's efforts to promote sportsmanship. To that end we violated the policy and we felt it was the right thing to do from out end.

"Jemal's 100 percent on board and the whole administration is on board with the decision."

Eight coaches have faced suspension since the rule was first implemented in 2006, but Davis becomes only the second to actually be suspended. East Hartford's Dan Lawrence was suspended a game in 2006 because his school failed to make an appeal.

The 50-point policy was violated just a week earlier (Oct. 13) this year by Joel Barlow of Redding, which defeated Immaculate of Danbury 56-0.

The CIAC, however, absolved Barlow's Rob Tynan, in part because Immaculate coach Tom Taylor told the review committee Tynan that did all he could to manage the score.

c.banning@theday.com