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Theresa Smith-Ross knew something was wrong when parents began to rush the football field at the Prince George's Sports and Learning Complex in Landover to snatch their children at a recent peewee football game.

Parents whose children play for one of the Upper Marlboro Boys and Girls Club teams are calling foul after their team won a Nov. 7 playoff game against a Kettering/Largo/Mitchellville team, but was ruled ineligible by the county Boys and Girls Club to advance in the playoffs because of an ineligible player.

The game ended in a yelling match between coaches from the two teams, and days later the Upper Marlboro team was disqualified.

The Upper Marlboro team, for children 5 to 7, had been poised to follow its victory by playing in the season-ending championship game scheduled for later this month. But KLM filed a protest soon after the game, on Nov. 10, reporting that an Upper Marlboro player — the coach's son — lives outside the team's district.

The county Boys and Girls Club, which assigns children to clubs based on residential boundaries, disqualified the Upper Marlboro team for using the ineligible player. The move ended the team's season and allowed the KLM team to move on to the championship game, despite its loss to Upper Marlboro.

Calvin Massie, executive director of the county's Boys and Girls Club, said KLM could not have filed the protest earlier in the season because the Nov. 7 game was the first matchup of the season for the two teams, and a protest for disqualification can only be issued once two teams have played.

Parents from the Upper Marlboro team petitioned the county for clarification during a Nov. 12 meeting at the Sports and Learning Complex.

"It's a violation of our rules, and our rules say any ineligible player is an automatic forfeit," Massie said.

According to parents from both teams, during the Nov. 7 game tension began building when the usually dominant KLM team was losing to Upper Marlboro. Coaches from both teams have accused the other of becoming aggressive and yelling at each other and at the young players.

Smith-Ross of Upper Marlboro, whose son, 6-year-old Elijah Ross, plays on the Upper Marlboro team, said that when the game was ending, parents jumped barriers between the stands and the field, scrambling to get their children.

"It was very chaotic — everyone was scared," she said.

Tyrome Ransome, head coach of the KLM team, said the Upper Marlboro head coach, Jay Jackson, was being verbally abusive toward the KLM team, even instructing his players to kick the KLM team during plays.

"The whole time he was on the field, he was taunting our players," he said.

Jackson denied he was being aggressive toward the KLM team, adding the game's three referees would have intervened.

"That's preposterous — we would never instruct kids to hit other kids," he said. "If that was the case, there was no way the referee would have allowed the game to continue."

Three days after the game, the KLM team filed a petition based on Boys and Girls Club's ground rules and definitions that stipulate a player who does not live within the district of the local club can be disqualified along with the team if the player lacks a seasonal transfer that would allow the player to play at a club in another district.

Jackson said his son, the ineligible player, had been a part of the team for two years without incident. He said he believed his son was in the Upper Marlboro district and not the Largo district because his zip code was a part of Upper Marlboro.

"It was retaliation and revenge," said Ayanna Shorter of Upper Marlboro, whose 7-year-old son plays on the team. "If we are out of the spot, [the KLM] team moves up into the championship."

Parents whose children play for the Upper Marlboro team said the disqualification has been hard on the children. Some parents said they had yet to break the news to the children, hoping some alternative could be reached that would allow them to play.

"Everybody is upset because the kids worked so hard. We feel like the politics of the game is affecting the kids," Smith-Ross said.

E-mail Joshua Garner at jgarner@gazette.net.