Northern Guilford HS investigated for cheating

[Bornthrilla]

Hardin: Kids are the losers in recruiting scandal
Friday, May 1, 2009
By Ed Hardin
Staff Writer


GREENSBORO — The games are easy until the adults get involved. School sports are innocent, and the kids just want to play the games and go home.

But the adults always get involved. And they always screw things up.

There might come a time in this county when we can watch our high school athletes the way we used to, enjoying their exploits not just because they wear our school colors but because we know them.

We used to know them. They grew up with our kids, went to our churches and played in the lot across the street. We knew their parents and their relatives, knew when they were out of town and when they were coming back because they told us to watch the cat and pick up the mail and gather the newspapers while they were gone.

It's not like that anymore. We don't know all the kids who wear our school colors. They don't live here anymore.

High school sports as we knew them are changing before our eyes. And it's not going to get any better, because there are too many people involved, too many moving parts, too many layers to an onion that needs to be thrown away, too many lawyers, too many coaches, too many parents willing to listen to everyone except the one who matters most.

The kid.

We're only scratching the surface of the problem here in Guilford County. The allegations of ineligible players at Northern Guilford and the acknowledged ineligible football player at Page are only the latest in a long line of allegations through the years that never got this far. That the state high school association is involved and the school system itself is involved makes it seem as if this has only been happening recently.

The fact is, this has been going on for years here and in Forsyth and Mecklenburg and Wake counties and everywhere else there are AAU programs and travel teams and club teams ultimately in competition with the high schools themselves.

How bad is it? Go to any Little League coach in this state and ask him where the best players are. They're in AAU, not Little League.

In years past, those players themselves banded together and chose their schools. It happened in golf and tennis and baseball and fast-pitch softball. The difference is that in Guilford County, some of the AAU coaches also are high school coaches. The difference is that in Guilford, there are private schools openly recruiting the same players. The difference is that in Guilford, the school system took the complaints seriously, looked into a few cases and realized how vast this problem is.

If the school system has a closed-book case against Page — and it appears that it does — then what would explain its reluctance to comment? If a school turns itself in to the high school association for using an ineligible athlete, as Page has done with a Winston-Salem football player now going to Northern, what in the world is keeping the central office from admitting it?

Could it be that this thing is just too big? Could it be that the school system wants Northern so bad that it's trying to tie Page into it?

There are two issues in play here. The first is the situation with Page and the ongoing investigation into Northern athletics. The second is what to do about it. Do we really want to go back to forcing kids to go to schools in their own attendance zones? This isn't a sports question. It's a busing question, a civil rights question, an academics question. And the answer is simple: No way.

The same thing is going on with flute players and aspiring ROTC students and early college-plan students wanting to take certain classes. We assume the system works for the whole, recognizing that some will take advantage of it. Our hopes are that those who would use the system for personal glory would be caught and exposed, and that those who continually do it will be purged.

Read more:

www.news-record.com/content/2009/05/01/article/kids_are_the_losers_in_recruiting_scandal

[Bornthrilla]

Investigation of athletics may widen, Green says
Thursday, May 7, 2009
By Robert Bell
Staff Writer

GREENSBORO — Guilford County Schools Superintendent Maurice “Mo” Green said Wednesday night investigators may look at other schools beyond Northern Guilford High if there’s strong enough evidence that those schools are using ineligible athletes or recruiting.

“There are already other schools that have declared students ineligible,” he told a lively audience of 300 people at Northern’s monthly PTSA meeting. “There are rules that we must follow, that we don’t allow whatever is going on to keep going on. We need to say, 'No, as a community, we’re going to be different. We’re going to hold ourselves to a higher standard.’

“You know (ineligible students and recruiting) goes on all across the country, but we’re not going to let that happen in Guilford County.”

Already, there were signs Wednesday that school system officials appeared to be investigating other programs:

* A week after Page High was cleared by the N.C. Athletic High School Association for using an ineligible player during the 2008 football season, school system officials acknowledged Wednesday they were conducting their own investigation.

Green’s chief of staff, Nora Carr, said school system officials were looking into the allegations of Patricia Hughes, who said her son, Gabe King, is the ineligible student. Hughes said last month school officials knew all along that her son did not live within the school district.

* Sources familiar with the investigation said schools system officials are also looking into whether Northeast Guilford basketball coach Curtis Hunter tried to recruit Northern point guard Michael Neal last month.

Carr declined to comment, but Neal’s mother, Garyette Neal, said Monday she met with Guilford County Athletics Director Leigh Hebbard last week to complain about Hunter’s overtures. Hunter could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

But even with two more schools being pulled into the widening probe, it wasn’t enough to detract attention from Northern. Green’s remarks Wednesday night were the strongest yet by a school system that has closely guarded its five-month investigation.

School system officials have said they are investigating eligibility and other unnamed issues at Northern. Sources say those issues include academics and recruiting and the probe is focused on the football, baseball and boys basketball teams. Green said he hopes the investigation will be finished this month.

PTSA President Debbie McGee took one look at the packed crowd and said, “This is the biggest PTA meeting we’ll ever have.”

After Green accepted cookies and a school T-shirt from the Northern boys basketball team, he proceeded to answer questions about that team as well as others teams at Northern.

Audience members were asked to write their questions on a index cards. More than 100 were turned in.

Green called fraudulent transfers “the heart of one of the reasons for this investigation” and indicated officials would re-examine the current system that allows students to move from one school to another seemingly with ease.

But Green quickly added his administration would look into other schools if allegations came up.

One audience member asked if school system officials were looking into complaints made by Northern basketball coach Stan Kowalewski last month in the News & Record that one of his players had been recruited by Dudley, but that nothing came of the complaint.


Read more:

www.news-record.com/content/2009/05/07/article/investigation_of_athletics_may_widen_green_says

[aahhbigboy]

Hunt is an idiot. Why would he do that given the current environment?

[Bornthrilla]

Maybe he thought he could "blend in". LOL

[blessedaggie84]

Update: Northern basketball team stripped of championship title
Wednesday, May 13, 2009

GREENSBORO — The North Carolina High School Athletic Association stripped Northern Guilford of its state boys basketball championship Wednesday after local school officials determined the team had used two players who should not have attended the school.

www.news-record.com/content/2009/05/13/article/sources_northern_team_to_lose_championship_title


Looks like Northern got hit hard by Mo Green and Guilford County schools

[The Professor]

Yeah they did but this thing is far from over. The coach is going to sue and will probably win. He was found to have done nothing wrong, but was fired because MO wanted a fresh start.

And boy those folk out there are pissed. I hope Mo can smooth this over at some point, because its my fear that they will begin to push canadiates to run for school board who want him removed

[aahhbigboy]

They're dumb as %#@* at Northern. Some of the kids' addresses were vacant lots. The admin out there changed the grading scale so that it looked like kids were eligible (hence the principal and AD were the first to go).

Maybe Stan has a case and maybe he doesn't, I'm not a lawyer. But he knew there was a problem. They lost institutional control out there as evidenced by all of the programs being involved (including cheerleading for crying out loud). They deserve everything they get.

[blessedaggie84]

I heard that the coach Kowalewski left his other coaching gigs at HP central and Bishop McGuinness High School because of issue similar to this. I heard this yesterday from other high school coaches. I guess he was doomed to get bit sooner or later.

[blessedaggie84]

what started this whole witch hunt on Northern in the first place? who were the people or school that first put this out that something was going on?

[aahhbigboy]

When you take kids from other programs, then you start rubbing people the wrong way. Page's coach has been EXTREMELY vocal. But it wasn't a witch hunt, they were blatantly sloppy. I mean, read the lastest article in the NR and look how slick Stan is talking about the investigators and what not. He's an idiot.

[The Professor]

It ain't over

[Bornthrilla]

Coaches voiced suspicions about Northern athletics
Friday, May 15, 2009
By Robert Bell
Staff Writer

GREENSBORO — Two days after Northern Guilford’s boys basketball team won the 3-A state high school championship, Page High basketball coach Robert Kent and Ragsdale High coach Craig Shoemaker chatted about the Nighthawks’ championship run.

Kent and Shoemaker had more than just passing interest: Northern and its coach, Stan Kowalewski, won the state title with two players who once played for Kent and Shoemaker before transferring to Northern.

“If we had the kid he stole from us, we would have won the state,” Kent told Shoemaker. “Same for you.”

“I agree,” Shoemaker replied. “With (player’s name deleted) you would have had the balance and depth you needed to win the Championship. I see now Northern is getting baseball and football players transferring as well.”

Shoemaker then brought up a News & Record article that ran on the eve of the boys state title. The story chronicled the large number of players who also played for the N.C. Gaters — an elite AAU program of which Kowalewski is a coach — who had transferred to Northern.

“I think one of the biggest problems is that no players/parents will talk about this because they don’t want to get blackballed by the gators (sic) in the summer,” he wrote.

The conversation, remarkable for its bluntness, is one of hundreds culled from more than 1,200 pages of e-mail messages released Wednesday by Guilford County Schools relating to its investigation into Northern’s athletics programs.

The N.C. High School Athletic Association stripped Northern of its basketball title Wednesday after determining the team used two players who should not have been attending the school.

An initial look by the News & Record at the heavily redacted e-mail messages offers little, if any, evidence of recruiting.

In fact, several show Kowalewski and former Athletics Director Derrell Force trying to educate families interested in transferring to Northern about local and state rules regarding recruiting.

Although none of the allegations brought up in the e-mail has been proven, they shed light on the growing frustrations and paranoia felt by coaches and administrators over the influx of talented athletes transferring to Northern.

When an assistant football coach at North Lincoln in Lincolnton asked Eastern Guilford High football coach Scott Loosemore for a scouting report on Northern in September 2008, Loosemore didn’t mince words.

“They are pretty good, have recruited Guilford County,” Loosemore wrote. “They have one kid that is supposed to be playing for us that is pretty good #21 I think. They also got about 8 kids from NE that would have started for them.”

The e-mails, which are public documents because they were written or received on a Guilford County Schools account, were requested by the News & Record last year after Kowalewski filed a defamation suit against Northwest Guilford Athletics Director John Hughes.

Kowalewski’s suit hinged on e-mail Hughes wrote to the NCHSAA deputy executive director, Que Tucker, and Northwest principal Angelo Kidd in 2007. Hughes said he was “convinced that Stan Kowalewski ... is actively recruiting and enrolling students at Northern who are not in the Northern attendance zone.

“The fact is, he is a very wealthy man who has the means to rent and provide addresses and transportation to several of his players.”

The messages, which date to 2007, also offer a glimpse, albeit a brief one, into the schools system’s investigation into Northern. The e-mail suggests officials were trying to keep some parts — or all — of the investigation under wraps.

On March 9 — one month before Northern principal Joe Yeager and Force resigned and schools officials went public with their investigation — schools investigator Carla Alphin asked Guilford County Athletics Director Leigh Hebbard if Northern had a school-wide athletics handbook.

Read more:

www.news-record.com/content/2009/05/15/article/coaches_voiced_suspicions_about_northern_athletics

[aggiejazz]

Are wide-leg pants still in style

[Bornthrilla]

Coach urges players to get out of Guilford
Saturday, May 16, 2009
By Robert Bell
Staff Writer

GREENSBORO -- Ousted Northern Guilford basketball coach Stan Kowalewski said Friday most of his former players have told him they will not return to the school in the fall.

He also said he will help those students find positions at preparatory or private schools nearby or along the East Coast.

Kowalewski, whose team was stripped of its N.C. High School Athletic Association 3-A state championship on Wednesday for using two ineligible players, said parents and players are angry over the school system's handling of the investigation.

"I told them I don't think they should ever go to school in Guilford County as long as the current administration is there and, let's face it, they won't be leaving any time soon," Kowalewski said.

Tim Frye, whose son Jonathan was a junior guard for the Nighthawks last season, said Friday his son plans to return to Northern for his senior season.

"We want to know a little more about the administrators, teachers and coaches, but that's our plan today," Tim Frye said.

Kowalewski has been critical of Guilford County Schools' five-month investigation into the Northern athletics program. School system officials have not completed the investigation, but they ruled Wednesday that five Northern students who played four sports -- basketball, baseball, wrestling and JV softball -- were ineligible. One student was a cheerleader.

School officials have said those students will be allowed to finish the school year at Northern but will be sent back to their correct school in the fall. Those students will be ineligible to participate in athletics next year, an indication school officials believe they tried to deceive Northern officials on their residency.

Nora Carr, Guilford County Schools chief of staff, said Friday the school system's investigation is looking at "issues involving a number of schools" beyond Northern.

"There are different concerns raised at different schools, but the vast majority center around athletic eligibility," Carr said. "And when you talk about athletic eligibility, the majority of those center around residency."

Carr said the investigation began, in part, because of what Superintendent Maurice "Mo" Green heard in "listening and learning" tour around the school system during his first 100 days on the job.

"Complaints started coming in almost as soon as the superintendent arrived in the district," Carr said. "... These (athletics) issues just kept coming up, and coming up, and coming up. It was just such a persistent voice of concern that it needed to be looked into. &ellipses; Because so many focused on Northern, that's why the investigation started there."

Read more:

www.news-record.com/content/2009/05/16/article/coach_urges_players_to_get_out_of_guilford

[dashspartan]

Maybe I missed this in one of the above articles, but wasn't Mo Green involved with the investigation into Charlotte Independence a couple of years ago?