NORTHAMPTON — The boys and girls soccer teams at Northampton High School will not be docked for forfeits in the PVIAC Western Mass. tournament after Northampton Public Schools won an emergency motion against the MIAA on Thursday afternoon.

The decision means that the two teams will be able to use their actual records heading into the state tournament, and it falls in line with other recent rulings regarding forfeitures of sectional tournament contests across western Massachusetts.

The motion came about because the MIAA deemed a handful of western Massachusetts schools ineligible to compete in their respective PVIAC sectional tournaments because of a scheduling error from athletic directors. According to the MIAA, athletic directors were told to input “TBA,” or “to be announced,” games into their schedule as placeholders for the Western Mass. tournament. However, there was nothing listed on any page of the MIAA rule book saying that some form of punishment comes with not adding the TBA games.

Eventually, the MIAA and PVIAC agreed the schools that committed this “violation” could play in the Western Mass. tournament, but their games would automatically count as forfeits.

The Northampton district went before Hampshire Superior Court Judge James M. Manitsas on Thursday, and was represented by Elizabeth Zuckerman from the Springfield law office of Bulkley, Richardson and Gelinas, which also represented Minnechaug and Monson in its successful case for an injunction over the same issue earlier this week.

The Northampton boys team watched its Division 2 ranking plummet six spots after its 3-2 loss to Longmeadow — a team ranked higher in both the WMass and state rankings — in the Class A quarterfinals because the defeat counted as a 3-0 forfeit.

The Blue Devils girls team also lost to Longmeadow in the Class A quarterfinals, and similarly, they dropped further down than normal because their two-goal loss was instead put in as a 3-0 forfeit.

Both teams then played East Longmeadow in a consolation match — the boys winning 2-1 and the girls battling to a scoreless draw. The difference between 3-0 forfeits and their actual results is drastic, and following Thursday’s ruling by the judge, the Northampton teams are going to be sitting in a much better spot in Division 2.

“This is huge,” Northampton boys soccer head coach CJ Holt said after the hearing. “With the forfeits, it’s dropped us half a dozen spots, as it should with a major 3-0 loss. But I think now, this is just fair for everyone. It helps the entire state to pool the teams accurately. We want accuracy. We went to this big state tournament so it would be more accurate. This is going to balance it, and accuracy should be the most important thing here. And it was fair to the kids.”

The Northampton School Committee on in executive session Monday and voted to hire an attorney to represent the school for this case.

Athletic Director David Proulx, Holt and a number of other Northampton representatives went to the Northampton courthouse to watch the hearing, and received the decision about two hours after its conclusion.

“I’d always thought that if we got it to court, we would win, based on the inconsistencies that have been in place with the MIAA’s communication,” Proulx said. “Timing-wise, it just happened to come out this late in the month, but I had always thought that if we had gotten here that we would get a positive result.”

Proulx noted that the emails the MIAA sent in years past always referred to the PVIAC tournament as an end-of-season tournament, and “part of the scheduling emails they’ve sent us in the past have said both in-season and end-of-season. That language was actually removed from the emails that came up closer to [the deadline]. In the week leading up to the deadline, they said to put placeholders in for in-season tournaments, but they had no explanation of what they considered an in-season tournament.”

Northampton is one of two Hampshire County schools to suffer from the forfeitures, the other being Hopkins Academy. With the MIAA soccer brackets released Friday, it looks as if the Golden Hawks have accepted the forfeits — and their girls soccer team plays for a Western Mass. Class D title on Friday.

Pioneer Valley Regional also went before a judge in Franklin County on Thursday, and it also won its case to eliminate the forfeits and assume its normal record.