Tori Tyson, Howard University’s softball coach, is insisting someone be held accountable for an incident during their warm-ups at a game in early March. Tyson shared in a series of tweets including details about an umpire throwing her out of the game for standing up for her players.
“Tomorrow my team will be taking the field without me as I am serving a two-game suspension for an incident during the third game of our UCR series on Mar. 4, 2023,” her tweet read.
Tomorrow my team will be taking the field without me as I am serving a 2 game suspension for an incident during the 3rd game of our UCR series March 4
— Tori Tyson (@ToriTyson) March 13, 2023
The team played an away game against the University of California-Irvine. During their warm-up before the game, an umpire mouthed to Howard’s softball players to hurry up because they were “moving too slow.”
“He positioned himself to block me and said this silently to her because he knew this was wrong! This isn’t integrity; this is manipulation!” Tyson tweeted. “This started from inning one. He was controlling her and the game; he never mentioned 90 seconds. She thought this was normal.”
In this video you are going to see the home plate umpire head to my catcher while U1 and U3 are still at 2nd base. Signifying we are still very well within our 90 seconds.
This is clearly challenges EVERYTHING the umpire claimed…. pic.twitter.com/HLpCPxU11v
— Tori Tyson (@ToriTyson) March 13, 2023
Tyson also shared video footage of the incident on Twitter, showing two umpires exchanging words. Then, the White umpire approached the team members warming up to share a few words with them. Tyson came to officials after this encounter, and officials agreed that the umpires were wrong but suggested Tyson wait until after the game to protest the incident. This later resulted in her being asked to leave the game.
The NCAA spoke out regarding this incident after Tyson’s tweets got some heavy traction. They stated that the same protocol for “processing this ejection [and] suspension report was followed that has been in place for many years. However, the NCAA Softball Rules Committee can discuss improving protocols related to processing ejection [and] suspension reports and will take your suggestions into consideration. Unfortunately, there is no appeal process and the NCAA softball playing rules don’t allow for an ejection [and] suspension to be overturned.”
