Just when you think you've heard it all, here comes a story about chicanery and subterfuge, albeit unintentional, in the world of...high school chess?

It seems that the Bowman Academy in Bowman, S.C., was forced to forfeit its second-place trophy in the recent South Carolina Independent School Association's state chess tournament because it used an ineligible player. The school has been barred from playing competitive chess for a year.

A story that was already great gets better because of two facts: The team was declared ineligible because its coach, Ryan Davis, substituted his son for another player who did not show up for the match, explaining in the Times and Democrat that he didn't think his son "was good enough to win a trophy."

The other pertinent fact is that Davis is a pastor at the First Baptist Church of Bowman.

We couldn't make that up.