BATON ROUGE - A bench-clearing brawl that took place during a high school basketball game prompted the LHSAA to discipline the schools involved.

Liberty Magnet and Zachary High School’s basketball teams were suspended from this season’s playoffs, ending the season early for the two top-10 ranked high school teams that were looking to make a playoff run.

Jerome Ferguson’s son was a Zachary player involved in the fight. He says he can’t understand why the punishment is so unfair to Zachary when it was Liberty students and fans that instigated the fight.

“It’s not fair to the other kids. If the LHSAA wanted to suspend my child I'm fully with it, but the team, they weren't involved in it so it makes no sense,” he said.

Ferguson says after his son grabbed the rebound, he was tripped up by a defender who then stepped over him and threw a punch. Shortly after, the Liberty student section, bench and freshman team swarmed the court.

“If they check the video you can see the fans were from Liberty. The fighting, Liberty. It had nothing to do with Zachary so we’re just trying to get a better understanding of the situation,” Ferguson said.

Zachary fans want answers. A petition to appeal with over 500 signatures has been started. Their coach taking to twitter asking what’s fair.

“If you give us some answers I think everyone will be at peace. It’s not equal it’s not fair, but people will understand it. To just give a broad blanket statement like that’s it, y'all gone. No ones really gonna understand that when there’s only one person involved in the incident and a coach that took multiple licks for him,” Ferguson said.

A group in Zachary planned to rally Thursday morning at LHSAA headquarters in hopes of getting an appeal before the playoffs start on Friday.