SAN DIEGO COUNTY HIGH SCHOOL BASEBALL : No. 9 Hilltop Will Forfeit 17 Victories

Hilltop High School will forfeit all 17 of its baseball victories, because it discovered that a transfer student should not have been allowed to participate this season, Fred Ferguson, Hilltop’s vice principal, said Monday.

Sergio Guzman, a junior transfer from Morse High who was leading Hilltop with a .455 average, has been declared ineligible. Under California Interscholastic Federation rule No. 214, Guzman would have had to sit out a year in baseball, because he played the sport his sophomore year at Morse.

He might have been eligible under the rule’s hardship clause, but he would have had to prove such a case in a written request to Section Commissioner Kendall Webb.

According to Ferguson, Guzman lived within Morse’s boundaries before moving in with relatives in National City at the beginning of the school year. Those relatives lived within Sweetwater’s boundaries, but Guzman attended Hilltop on a legal intradistrict ethnic transfer.

Because Guzman played in every game this year, Hilltop is now 0-24. It was 17-7. Every team in the Metro Conference picks up at least one victory with Sweetwater and Mar Vista getting two. Eight other schools--Escondido, USDHS, St. Augustine, Granite Hills,, Ramona, University City, Madison and San Pasqual--will also pick up forfeit victories.

The ninth-ranked Hilltoppers went from a three-way tie for first in the Metro Conference to last. They may still receive an at-large bid to the playoffs later this week.