PART III – THE FINAL VERDICT
Fort Hill football was forced to forfeit five wins this season for using an ineligible player. This is Part III of the story.
In the very beginning of this process, Fort Hill head coach Zack Alkire requested that the BOE decision to enroll the West Virginia transfer be checked again, verified and legitimate. Eight weeks later the same people in charge of investigating such and telling Alkire this player is clear to be a student at Fort Hill are the same exact people that now must tell Alkire he is not eligible. Sorry we got this one wrong, but you and your kids must pay the price by forfeiting their games.
For the sake of every student-athlete in Allegany County – a student-athlete should be eligible until he or she is found to be ineligible. Retroactively applying punishment doesn’t make sense. Some neighboring counties have adopted a policy for when a student is determined to be eligible at a specific school based on residency, there is no future investment in attempting to determine otherwise. The idea is to get it right the first time.
Moving forward, any anonymous tip should be tossed in the waste basket. The investigation into this story has revealed that many other times in the past the BOE has been made aware of students, athlete or non-athlete, potentially not living where they claim by administrators from within the system only to be left uninvestigated. The BOE does not have enough employees to track them down.
Unfortunately, many times a child gets caught between who they might be living with depending on the situation. Is that child staying with a relative, a friend, a grandparent, a single mom, a divorced father, a parent in and out of the local prison system or all the above? Maybe the child floats back and forth between the divorced mother and father. Too many of those situations are commonplace today. However, if there are not enough employees to track down reports made by administrators within the system itself, then using taxpayer dollars to track down anonymous tips is a gigantic leap.
In defense of the BOE and the PPW employees that determine eligibility, they cannot know that a parent might be providing untruthful information to get their child cleared as a transfer student. If the BOE cannot know, a coaching staff cannot be expected to discover where somebody sleeps. There can be no defense of a stance that student-athletes (such as the Fort Hill team) be punished for actions they had nothing to do with any more than a BOE employee be punished for not discovering the truth.
The MPSSAA does not decide whether a student is eligible or not. That is left for the local jurisdiction (BOE) to determine. The BOE had the ability to declare Serge Babo’s son ineligible commencing the week of Homecoming. If that student participates in athletics moving forward, then force the team to forfeit those games. Prior to that, the student was eligible because the BOE said so. There was never a need to involve the MPSSAA in the first place to set retroactive forfeits as has been the case in the past.
One of the significant “what if” examples other coaches have discussed should be a warning. It’s very common for most coaches to have a disgruntled parent(s) to deal with as many coaches usually do because maybe that player didn’t get to play enough or maybe that parent did not care for the way coaches were utilizing their child. If that disgruntled parent purposefully wishes to move five miles away across the state line without telling anyone and then turn around and anonymously self-report the infraction does the team have to forfeit the season? The anonymous tips in this situation came from disgruntled people with an axe to grind. Had Serge Babo’s son not been an athlete, odds are that few care and this never gets reported.
Serge Babo now has his son re-enrolled back at Fort Hill as of January 8. He provided those six new pieces of important and thorough documentation the BOE requested of him after his son was suspended (see Part II of this story), which is obviously outside the lines of normal policy. Had this documentation process for approving out-of-state transfers been in place last August, this situation would not have occurred in the first place. The PPW investigators in charge of these issues and the father in charge of proving residency would at least have a puzzle to put together where the pieces fit – not a policy open to scrutiny, confusion and interpretation.
Accepting a parent’s utility bill in the beginning with a West Virginia address but a Maryland mailing address should have been a red flag, which means stop. Accepting a W4 employment statement four months later (among other document requirements) from the parent/guardian showing where they pay state taxes makes much more sense. Put that in writing.
Despite being a sportswriter for a better chunk of the last 25 years, this subject matter was extremely difficult to put into words on a page. I have the good fortune to consider most all the people involved friends and trusted people. It seems the main problem here had more to do with administrative policy, procedural error and a parent attempting to do whatever it takes to help his child.
Many suggested just dropping this story, which really forced a look in the mirror while taking advice from trusted associates in the writing business. On a personal level, for the better half of those last 25 years, helping children through athletics has been the focus point of all that’s good in the human spirit. This was an effort to stand up for those children, especially when the adult world around them is doing otherwise while trying to protect their own seat. There is no intention here to smear those in charge or those on the other side bound by their decisions. Just relaying the storyline in these situations is sometimes necessary given the social media world of innuendo and rumors taken as truth that currently exist.
To those in charge of implementing policy and administering punishment, be initiative-taking and toss out the antiquated guidelines set forth by previous generations to establish a clear path of transparency that protects the student-athletes and employees. You are punishing people under your wing that have nothing to do with the entire process. The folks in charge of that entire process was you.
Todd Helmick is a former Florida State University football player. He has written stories for several newspapers/publications for 25 years and owns the college football website NationalChamps.net. Todd has appeared on over 50 radio stations across the country, including The Paul Finebaum Show and regularly on his hometown station Baltimore FOX Sports 1370.