The National Collegiate Boxing Association Championships were supposed to start tonight with three boxers representing Penn State. Instead, the NCBAs will get underway without any of Penn State's qualifiers even getting to hear the opening bell.

When the Penn State boxing team took to the ring March 10-11 for the Eastern Collegiate Boxing Association Championships, a national qualifier, it did so with at least two ineligible boxers.

According to Erin Regenfuss, coordinator of club sports, the reliability waivers for Mory Diane and Mannaa Mannaa, two of the boxers who qualified for the national championships, had not been submitted to the club sports office before the ECBAs.

"[Not having the reliability waivers] is a very big deal for the university," Regenfuss said. "It's something that is required by our office in conjunction with the Risk Management Office."

In addition to the team not submitting the waivers, Regenfuss added that the team had not informed the club sports office that the two boxers in question would even be competing in the ECBAs. This voided their qualifications because they were ineligible participants in the eyes of the university.

Originally it had been decided that only Diane and Mannaa were ineligible for nationals, but, after a series of meetings to clear the matter up, it was decided that Dustin Frank, the third boxer to qualify for nationals at the ECBAs, would also not be allowed to compete.

"We don't penalize individuals, we hold the whole club accountable. To be consistent with what we do across the board in our clubs, we needed to have the consequence be for the whole club, rather than just Mory [Diane] and Mannaa [Mannaa]," Regenfuss said.

Already coping with a shortened season, this was a crushing blow to the three who qualified for nationals, two of whom were seniors.

"I was training hard," said Diane, the lone junior of the trio. "I was putting in extra runs and stuff. Outside of practice I was doing stuff, like shadow boxing at home, and then they tell me that I can't go. I pretty much got insurance just so I could go.

"The good news for me is that I have a chance next year. So I can't do it this year, but I can train that much harder from the beginning next year to make sure I win this, and show them that, 'All right, you didn't let me do it this year, but I'm gonna get it next year.' "

However, Frank and Mannaa will not have that chance -- they're seniors.

"Dustin, he's been tryin' to do that for a few years," Diane said. "Last year he didn't qualify, then this year he did. It was his dream. His parents and relatives had already bought tickets to go out there. They were like, 'We're gonna go,' and now they just learned that they can't go. It's just money thrown out the window. Mannaa has been boxing for I don't know how long. His parents would have been so proud of him."

While Diane thinks of what could have been, Penn State boxing club president Bill Seskey wasn't as receptive to the news.

"Basically they're not going to nationals over a filing error, which to me is ridiculous," Seskey said, "I don't think that club sports should hold them to this, they should sympathize. They shouldn't hold back a dream of going to fight for your university over a paper that is turned in late. Now granted it was our mistake, but it certainly won't happen again next year."

With the season now over, the opportunity it presented is no longer.

"For all three of us it just shattered our dreams," Diane said, "and I'm the only one out of us three that has another chance."