Simi Valley Eliminated by Marmonte Flip-Flop : Baseball: League breaks tie with coin toss, not Pioneers’ 2-0 record against Westlake.

Not that Mike Scyphers needed another excuse to be bitter.

Scyphers’ 17th and final season as Simi Valley High baseball coach ended Saturday on a coin toss.

Although the Pioneers swept Westlake in two regular-season games, Marmonte League representatives voted, 5-3, Saturday that the teams’ tie for the third and final Southern Section Division I playoff spot would be broken by a coin flip.

Westlake won.

“We deserve to go to the play offs, not Westlake,” Scyphers said. “We swept them. This is another conspiracy against me and players on the Simi Valley baseball team.”

The coin toss ended a week that included Scyphers admitting he has been forced by school administrators to resign as coach after 12 months of controversy and allegations.

The Pioneers were in first place all season until Friday’s final game, which they lost, 7-6, to Thousand Oaks--which won the league championship.

Royal, Simi Valley, Westlake and Camarillo finished in a four-way tie for second place.

On Friday night the debate raged by phone among coaches and athletic directors over which tiebreakers should be used, resulting in a meeting of league representatives on Saturday.

Head-to-head competition among the four teams was the first tiebreaker selected, and Royal earned the No. 2 spot with a 4-2 record against the other teams. Camarillo was eliminated with a 2-4 record.

But Simi Valley (17-9, 9-5) and Westlake (19-6, 9-5) each had 3-3 records, so the league next went to a point system whereby teams get more points for victories against teams that finished higher in the league standings. Again, Simi Valley and Westlake were tied.

The league representatives then spent two hours debating interpretations of the by-laws, said Camarillo Principal Terry Tackett, this year’s league president.

They finally decided the next tie-breaker should be a coin toss, rather than Simi Valley’s 2-0 record against Westlake.

“This is unbelievable,” Scyphers said. “We should have never gone to a coin flip. They only went to a coin flip because they don’t want Mike Scyphers in the playoffs.”

Bill Clark, assistant commissioner of the Southern Section, said no at-large berths will be granted in the Division I baseball playoffs.

Simi Valley has missed the playoffs only three times--in 1979, 1984 and 1990--under Scyphers.