Ashland University’s volleyball team was in and then out of the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference after a curious twist of events.

After AU’s loss on Saturday afternoon against Findlay, the team was waiting to hear results from Ohio Dominican and Malone to help determine the team’s playoff fate.

ODU lost that match, which put Ashland into seventh spot for the GLIAC tournament. Ohio Dominican was the eighth seed and Hillsdale was left out of the tournament.

The conference issued a press release and brackets were given out about the tournament (that included Ashland), but a short time later, all of that information was scrubbed from the GLIAC’s website. 

Moments later, a new bracket was created, and Ashland was missing. In its place was Hillsdale as a seven seed.

WRDL 88.9 contacted Chris Roekle, GLIAC sports information director, for clarification on the tournament seeding and to request an interview with Commissioner Dell Robinson or Assistant Commissioner of Championships Danielle Harris. 

The conference refused interview requests, but sent a detailed explanation from Roekle. 

Roeckle said the conference misinterpreted its own volleyball tiebreaker procedures for a three-way tie. He said the conference initially used head-to-head records as the tie-breaker among the three teams with the same 10-8 conference record. Using that formula put Ashland, which went 2-1 against ODU and Hillsdale, in the seven seed. Hillsdale was 1-2 against Ashland and ODU, which kept it out of the tournament.

“After realizing our error, we determined that since there were no undefeated teams among those tied and there were no winless teams among those tied, we needed to go to No. 2 of the two-way tiebreaker process,” Roekle said in the conference statement, “record versus highest ranked teams in descending order.”

Hillsdale beat No. 3 seed Findlay, so it got the seven seed. ODU beat No. 6 seed Malone, so it got the eight seed. That knocked AU out of the postseason.

“We are definitely disappointed with the fact that we didn’t make the tournament,” head coach Cass Dixon said. “We can’t control that anymore, but we can use this for motivation for next season.” 

The conference, for its part, apologized for the misinterpretation. 

“We do realize that the GLIAC Volleyball Tiebreaker procedures need more clarification and moving forward the GLIAC Office will work with the Coaches to achieve this goal as soon as possible,” the conference statement said.