Westminster Forced to Forfeit, and Edison Loses Playoff Berth

The Westminster High School baseball team must forfeit its final Sunset League game, Friday’s 7-6 victory over Ocean View, because it used an illegal player, league principals ruled Saturday.

The forfeit drops Westminster, now 15-11 overall and 8-7 in league play, into a third-place tie in the Sunset League. Ocean View (14-10-1, 8-6-1) moves from fourth to second in the league, behind league champion Huntington Beach.

Edison (12-12-1, 8-7), which had finished in third place and as the league’s No. 3 team for the Southern Section 5-A playoffs, now ends tied with Westminster. The Chargers, however, lost two of three regular-season games to Westminster and are eliminated from the playoffs.

Robert Boehme, Westminster principal and the Sunset League’s representative to the Southern Section, said that league principals met in person and by phone Saturday morning and determined that Westminster’s use of catcher Angel Lopez violated league rules.

Ocean View Coach Bill Gibbons filed a protest in the seventh inning of the game when Lopez replaced Dax Hammers. Lopez had played on Westminster’s junior varsity team on Thursday against Ocean View. According to Boehme, league rules prohibit players from playing at two different levels against the same team in the same week.