What the WIAA says about recruitment
It would make for a remarkable story if it were a Friday Night Lights kind of a deal.
I will get your mom a job.
I will guarantee you a college scholarship.
I will find you an “address” in our boundary.
The Jon Eagle suspension story is not Friday Night Lights. There is no pay for play.
Actually, the only people who can say that definitively are the parties involved. It is just I have too much respect for Eagle to jump to the conclusion that he came anywhere near “Hollywood clichés” regarding high school football.
The appeals process will determine the final penalty, or perhaps exonerate Eagle. For now, though, the head coach of Camas football is facing a four-game suspension in the 2015 season for a “recruiting” violation and assistant coach Dan Kielty has been suspended for one game.
Eagle and Kielty have declined comment. Leta Meyer, the Class 4A Greater St. Helens League president, and Rory Oster, the athletic director at Camas, said Thursday they are done talking about this until after the appeals process concludes.
Unfortunately, that just leads to wild accusations, i.e. the Friday Night Light scenarios. That’s too bad, because all we really know for certain is the league voted that whatever Eagle is alleged to have done is a violation.
Step away from this specific situation for a minute. It is no secret that athletes change schools, looking for greener fields elsewhere, every season, in a number of sports.
We know that parents and athletes have lied about addresses. We know that once athletic directors get the required paperwork, there is not always a rush to confirm those addresses. Parents should know that if they lie, and they get exposed, it is their son or daughter who can lose eligibility.
But as far as athletes looking to go elsewhere and discussing this desire with a coach? That is not supposed to happen. Ever.
I have heard the same thing from athletic directors in my 14 years covering high school sports in Clark County: If an athlete (or a parent of an athlete) from another school approaches a coach about playing for the coach, the coach is supposed to say he cannot talk to him and direct him and his parents to the athletic director.
That’s it.
We do not know the specifics regarding the violation at Camas. But we do know, from Oster’s statement released Wednesday, that there was a communication issue:
“The incident at hand is related to the manner in which questions from a non-Camas student-athlete were answered,” Oster wrote.
Well, if those questions were answered by the athletic director, it goes to reason that two coaches would not have been suspended. Instead, we are left to wonder who gave the answers to those questions. On Wednesday, the 4A GSHL made its ruling.
If there was a meeting or a conversation between a coach and an athlete from another school, we do not know what was said. But if it was anything other than “can’t talk to you, talk to my AD,” that is a violation.
This is uncharted territory for the 4A Greater St. Helens League. No one can remember the last time a coach has been penalized for recruiting.
District 4 of the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association will hear an appeal in a couple of weeks. From there, it could go to the Executive Board of the WIAA.
We might not know any more details until after the process.
My guess: Those details will be tame by Hollywood standards. But still, those details could have consequences.
