St. Charles Preparatory School has filed a request for an injunction against the Ohio High School Athletic Association in Franklin County Common Pleas Court in an attempt to have its boys soccer team reassigned to Division I for the upcoming postseason.
In a 35-page civil complaint filed Sept. 11, St. Charles seeks an expedited hearing to grant its request to opt up to Division I rather than remain in its originally assigned classification, Division II, in the wake of what the complaint calls an administrative error.
Preliminary divisional assignments were announced April 23, and the complaint admits the school’s athletic department did not submit the opt-up form to the OHSAA by the May 8 deadline.
“Within approximately three hours, St. Charles
Head Boys Soccer Coach, Chris Vonau, completed the required opt-up form requesting that St. Charles compete in Division I and forwarded it to St. Charles Athletic Director, David Lawler, for submission to OHSAA,” the complaint reads, adding that Lawler at the time was managing “significant and unforeseen health issues” that led to lengthy absences from school.
According to the complaint, an assistant athletic director who was not named told Lawler the form could be scanned to his phone and submitted electronically. When Lawler asked if that process had been completed, he was told it had, but a miscommunication led Lawler to believe the entire process was completed while the assistant understood that to mean the form had been scanned and converted to a format that could be submitted electronically.
The school then did not revisit the opt-up process, believing it to be completed, but realized when the final alignments were released June 22 that the Cardinals remained in Division II.
Despite submitting the opt-up form later the same day, the OHSAA told St. Charles its request could not be granted because it was received after final placements were made.
Further attempts to resolve the issue were met with the same response, according to the complaint.
“[The OHSAA] determined that the failure categorically foreclosed any consideration or discretion to correct St. Charles’s request,” the complaint states.
It also repeatedly emphasizes in similar wording that “St. Charles is not asking to move down a division or obtain an easier path through the postseason. It asks to move up to Division I – the division it selected before the deadline, the division for which its team has prepared, and the division it has competed in for decades.”
The complaint also notes that for the team’s eight seniors, “this is their final opportunity to compete with their teammates for the Division I state championship. There is no later season in which this ‘valuable and unique’ interscholastic experience can be provided or recreated.”
Messages seeking further comment were left Sept. 15 with Lawler, Vonau and OHSAA director of communications Tim Stried.
St. Charles was assigned to Division II each of the past two seasons – the first two in which the OHSAA instituted five divisions for the soccer postseason – but opted up to Division I and made lengthy tournament runs both years. The Cardinals were state runners-up in 2024 and lost in a state semifinal in 2025.
The district tournament draw is Oct. 11.
St. Charles is one of 20 schools assigned to Division II for the Central District postseason.
Twenty-five local teams are in the Division I tournament.
The state finals are Nov. 15 and 16 at Historic Crew Stadium.
High school sports reporter Dave Purpura can be reached at dpurpura@dispatch.com and at @dp_dispatch on X.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: St. Charles takes OHSAA to court over soccer team's tournament division
