Recent 'red cards' send signal on prep eligibility

Just one month ago, Bishop Gorman and Rancho high schools were two of the 1998 boys soccer season's feel-good stories.

Despite losing much of their starting lineup from last year, the Gaels had established themselves as one of the area's top clubs again this fall. And the Rams, who have struggled mightily in prep sports throughout the 1990s, appeared headed toward a playoff berth.

But the Gorman and Rancho soccer teams have been making news of a different sort lately. Within a three-week period, both schools have been forced to forfeit their conference victories for using academically ineligible players.

Now, the Gaels and Rams are out of the playoff hunt. Their schools' administrators are embarrassed, their coaches are angry and their players are disappointed that their seasons have ended this way.

The two soccer episodes raise a question pertinent to all of Southern Nevada's prep athletic programs: Is enough being done to insure high school athletes are academically eligible before they step onto the field?

Most local administrators think the current system should be enough. They also admit that, from time to time, it breaks down.

"Most of the people I talk to and deal with seem to take these things very seriously, to prevent the types of unfortunate situations that happened at Gorman and Rancho," Bonanza Athletic Administrator Kim Grytdahl said. "But every once in a while, a kid slips through."

The requirements

Under Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association rules, athletes must maintain a 2.0 grade-point-average in the previous semester to be eligible to participate.

That means a student wishing to play fall sports must have had a 2.0 GPA the previous spring, and a student planning to play spring sports must have had a 2.0 the previous fall.

At the end of each semester, each school's athletic administrator and athletic director compile a list of academically eligible students and distribute it to their coaching staff.

If a fall athlete is not on the list, he can enroll in summer school to boost his GPA. If the spring and summer grades, when combined, average 2.0 or higher, the athlete can participate.

Students coming into their freshman year must have passed at least four classes in the spring of their eighth-grade year, while students transferring to a school must have passed at least two units of credit (most classes are worth half a unit).

Checking up

Even after an athlete establishes his eligibility, there's no guarantee he will be playing by season's end. Clark County schools are required to check their athletes' grades every three weeks throughout the year.

"The athletic administrator is responsible," district athletic director Larry McKay said. "The buck stops with them."

If an athletic administrator or athletic director discovers that an athlete is failing a class or receiving an unsatisfactory grade in citizenship, the student goes on probation for one week.

If he doesn't raise his grade during that period, he automatically becomes ineligible for one-week intervals, until he gets it to a passing level.

So essentially, the individual high schools are on the honor code. In an ever-growing district like this one, each school is responsible for maintaining its own athletic programs' academic standing.

The district has no official safeguards to make sure schools are doing their job. McKay is quick to point out, however, that he keeps his ears open for news that ineligible athletes are playing.

"If I find out that someone has altered the process, it is my responsibility to make sure they start doing it correctly," McKay said.

The system breaks down

McKay also knows from firsthand experience that the best intentions aren't always enough when it comes to policing academic eligibility.

In the spring of 1997, when McKay was athletic administrator at Durango, the school was forced to forfeit 22 baseball games for using an academically ineligible player.

As a longtime district administrator, McKay was more familiar with the ins and outs of the academic guidelines than most. Yet his discovery that his school was not in compliance proved that the system has inherent flaws.

"It just slipped through the cracks," said McKay, who discovered the error while researching grades for all-academic honors. "Nobody is infallible, and those things can happen."

On Oct. 2, Bishop Gorman athletic director Norm Craft found a similar mistake had been made, also during a routine check for all-academic purposes. In his school's case, two soccer players had been cleared to play despite having spring GPAs below 2.0

"There's a lot of debate about how it happened," Craft said. "Somehow, the system failed. You roll along in a process and then something happens and it jerks you back to reality."

And last week, Rancho athletic administrator John Barlow self-reported an error he discovered while nominating a student for the NIAA's Athlete of the Week award. His case involved a student who had transferred to the school and did not have the requisite number of credits last semester.

"Lack of communication is basically what it boiled down to," Barlow said. "The athletic office did not know this kid was playing."

What can be done?

Obviously, the current system works far more often than it doesn't. Thousands of students participate in athletics annually in Clark County's high schools, making these incidents exceptions to the rule.

But the recent forfeits at Gorman and Rancho have administrators and coaches around town talking about what else they can do to avoid adding their schools to that list.

McKay, for one, recommends that coaches take more time to talk to their athletes and make sure they're aware of the rules. He also suggests frequent grade inquiries by coaches, above and beyond the three-week checks mandated by the district.

"I know a lot of coaches who make a kid turn in a grade check every week because they don't want him to have three weeks to bury himself," McKay said.

Grytdahl advocates additional checks prior to the start of each season, thus avoiding sending an athlete on the field without being 100-percent certain of his eligibility.

"We have multiple checks before each season starts," Grytdahl said. "We check grades twice even before the first game."

And in light of his school's recent slip-up, Craft plans to double-check rosters for future fall seasons, before and after the summer.

"In the summer, we're going to take it a little deeper," Craft said. "Once we got the rosters for the fall sports, we'll check every kid's GPA again."

Above all, the district's administrators and coaches agree that some measure of responsibility must fall on the shoulders of the student-athletes themselves.

After all, no one knows a student's GPA better than he does. And if he understands the 2.0 requirement and knowingly plays, his teammates are the ones who get hurt most by potential forfeits.

"I remember when I played ball and when my son played ball here in the valley," Craft said. "We knew what we needed to do to stay eligible."

"The kids know the rules, so they should be aware of it," NIAA Executive Director Jerry Hughes said. "It's been in place for more than 20 years, so most people are familiar with it. But something does happen periodically."

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