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Team booted from playoffs for wearing jerseys from breast cancer awareness month

Narbonne's jerseys featuring pink numbers were deemed illegal. (Courtesy of The Daily Breeze)
Narbonne's jerseys featuring pink numbers were deemed illegal. (Courtesy of The Daily Breeze)

The Narbonne (Harbor City, Calif.) High School girls basketball team will not get to finish its season, despite winning its city league semifinal game on Saturday. The girls are out because they wore illegal jerseys, according to city league organizers.

The problem with the jerseys? They featured pink lettering, and pink is not an official school color. The jerseys were from breast cancer awareness month.

"Breast cancer awareness is in October, and there's a process for people to request color change," City Section commissioner John Aguirre told the L.A. Times. "The principal didn't even know about these numbers. If they're going to blatantly disregard these rules and regulations, they're going to affect kids."

Based on what the coach told the Times, it doesn't sound like she was blatantly disregarding a rule.

“I was under the impression we were able to do it. I didn’t know we had to fill out a waiver,” coach Victoria Sanders said.

She isn't the first to make a uniform mistake this year.

According to the Times, North Hollywood had to forfeit a girls' volleyball match earlier this year "for wearing black uniforms. Black is not part of its school colors."

Narbonne's penalty is especially severe because the team was already on probation for violating a league rule – a player who'd earned two technical fouls in a game last year didn't serve a one-game suspension.

The jersey debacle seems like an unfortunate oversight that is now costing the girls the most exciting games of the year. Narbonne has also been banned from the state playoffs because of the jerseys.

The school's athletic director did not return messages from Yahoo Sports. Narbonne can appeal the decision, according to the Times.

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Danielle Elliot is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact her at delliot@yahoo-inc.com or find her on Twitter.