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And the school is forced to forfeit their entire season..
Homewood-Flossmoor coach, girls basketball team disqualified, lose all wins from season
By Andy Grimm and Steve Mills, Tribune reporters
Just hours before the top-ranked Homewood-Flossmoor girls basketball team was to take the floor to begin its playoff march, the state high school athletic association delivered a bombshell Wednesday, suspending the entire team and its highly regarded coach for rules violations.
The sanctions by the Illinois High School Association come just weeks after a lawsuit rocked the highly touted program, accusing coach Anthony Smith of improperly recruiting star players from other school districts in his first season at H-F. That prompted the school district to conduct an internal investigation that led it to acknowledge it had violated rules, though none for improper recruiting.
Marty Hickman, the IHSA's executive director, told the Tribune that the IHSA had reached an agreement with the school district Tuesday night to suspend Smith and 11 of the team's 17 players but still allow the others to play in the state tournament.
But that deal broke down Wednesday, Hickman said, when the district decided to appeal, leading the IHSA to impose heavier sanctions, including that the 20-2 team had to forfeit all of its victories for the season.
“Last night they agreed to send a letter indicating the coach and 11 players wouldn't play,” Hickman, who indicated that the investigation at the school was continuing, said Wednesday evening. “This morning they said they weren't doing that. So that was off the table.”
A last-minute challenge in Cook County Circuit Court Wednesday by the parents of several players also failed.
Disciplining a high school on the eve of the state playoffs is unusual but not unprecedented. East St. Louis High School was disqualified from the state football playoffs in 2010 following an IHSA investigation into player residency issues. The downstate school had to forfeit five of its eight wins from 2010 and all its 10 victories from the previous year.
The IHSA made its ruling public just an hour before the scheduled 6 p.m. tip-off of H-F's game against Thornton Fractional North. The IHSA ordered that the game be forfeited, allowing T-F North to move on to the next round.
The violations cited by the IHSA involved off-season workouts run by Smith as well as a summer league tournament involving the elite club team he coached, according to the IHSA. Letters from the district to the IHSA over the past week acknowledged the district had held conditioning workouts for years before Smith arrived at the school. The letters also said Smith signed in as a coach at a summer league tourney even though the district said he remained in the grandstands and did not coach.
Smith's Illinois Dream Team, which plays in the U.S. Junior Nationals circuit, includes 11 players who are also on his varsity squad.
Hickman said the school's investigation failed to find any wrongdoing, but he said the IHSA quickly found rules violations when its officials studied material provided by the school district. He described “red flags” in the material that the district failed to detect or appreciate.
He said that school district officials began to inquire about the appeals process after they had agreed to the suspensions that would have still allowed the short-handed team to face Thornton Fractional Wednesday night. The district did so in a phone call Wednesday morning and then during a meeting with the IHSA board in Bloomington later in the day. he said.
“Their position changed,” Hickman said. “Not ours.”
Although the IHSA did not rule on the recruiting allegations raised in the lawsuit, Hickman said the violations it found gave H-F an advantage over other schools.
“It's simply not fair to allow a school to participate when they've shown a disregard for our rules on several fronts,” he said. “Is it unfortunate for Homewood-Flossmoor? Yes. But that's on them. We have to take steps to protect the integrity of the competition. When you look at their preseason conditioning schedule, that's clearly prohibited.”
“It's just not fair,” he added.
Smith could not be reached for comment.
School board member Jeanne McInerney said the punishment was unfair to the players, but she lamented that the decision to go to Bloomington to appeal for lesser sanctions backfired and ended the team's state tourney hopes.
“I think the punishment far outstrips the crime,” she said. “I think that they went down on behalf of the girls and they made it worse.”
Attorneys for six players, including senior point guard Amarah Coleman, a University of Illinois recruit, sought a temporary restraining order against the IHSA that would have allowed the team to compete in the playoffs. They argued that players and their parents were unaware eligibility had become an issue and they had been denied a fair hearing before the IHSA ordered sanctions.
A judge, though, turned down the request, siding with the IHSA.
“(The players) didn't do anything wrong, and they didn't have any representation (before the IHSA),” said Brunell Donald, an attorney for some of the students. “This was all through the alleged actions of someone else. This was another chance for them to shine and win a state championship.”
H-F officials announced the sanctions at a meeting at the south suburban school. Parents and students were disappointed by the news.
One player, Faith Suggs took the news particularly hard after transferring to H-F after playing her first two seasons at Plainfield East High School. Her father, former NFL player Shafer Suggs, said his daughter will learn from this experience.
“I'm extremely sad for the girls, to see them all crying and dealing with unfortunate circumstances that they have no control over,” said Suggs, who was among the parents who went to court Wednesday.
The controversy at H-F first garnered headlines when an unnamed player who lost her starting spot to one of six transfers filed a lawsuit last month that alleged that Smith improperly recruited the players to follow him from Bolingbrook High School, where he won four state titles over a dozen years. The lawsuit sought the suspensions of Smith and the six transfer students, including four from Bolingbrook.
While based on circumstantial evidence, the lawsuit nonetheless raised concerns. Three of the transfers to H-F listed the same Flossmoor house as their address. IHSA rules require student-athletes to live with their custodial parent even after they turn 18 to be eligible to play sports. For two of the girls, the transfer to H-F was their fourth in four years of high school.
Smith and the district had denied the recruiting allegations and pointed to the fact the IHSA had approved the transfers last summer.
Gregory Mitchell, the attorney for the unnamed player who filed the lawsuit, suggested the IHSA failed to investigate the recruiting allegations. He said IHSA officials never contacted his client or the mother of a girl on the Bolingbrook team who had provided a sworn statement claiming she overheard a parent of one of the transfer students talking about residency issues before the season.
“They didn't even ask us about the transfers,” he said. “I guess H-F is vindicated on the recruiting issue at this point.”
Hickman said the investigation into H-F's basketball team was continuing and that the inquiry could involve other sports as well as the recruiting allegations. He acknowledged that proving recruiting charges can be difficult, but he pointed to a text message Smith sent to players about an “open gym” where they could come and play. Hickman said some of the students who received the text were not H-F students, suggesting Smith was violating rules about contact with students.
Hickman called the text “a red flag.”
_________________ Frank Coztansa wrote: conns7901 wrote: Not over yet. Yes it is. CDOM wrote: When this is all over, which is not going to be for a while, Trump will be re-elected President.
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