Other Teams Spared Post-Season Ban for Girls' BB Offenses

Prep Charter's postseason ban proved to be too heavy-handed, as the PIAA ruled Wednesday that all sports except girls' basketball will be eligible for this season's playoffs.

In July, District 12 banned all Huskies teams from the postseason after three girls' basketball players were found to be living outside the city of Philadelphia.

The girls' basketball team, which had been banned in May from this season's playoffs, was penalized with a second year of postseason ineligibility. The PIAA upheld that ruling Wednesday.

First-year football coach David Hand said he had told his players to have hope that the ruling would be overturned. It was just one sport, he said, not the entire program. He was able to relay the news at Wednesday afternoon's practice.

"They were ecstatic," Hand said. "It was a sense of relief because they really believed in us. And everyone from the president to the athletic director fought for the kids."

The school district's inspector general discovered in May that two girls' basketball players, who registered at the school with Southwest Philadelphia addresses, actually lived in Coatesville. A third player was found in July to have commuted from South Jersey.

The Huskies used the ineligible players to capture the last two Public League girls' basketball titles. They were forced to forfeit them in July.

Earlier this week, Ahnje Timbers won her appeal to District 12 to transfer from Prep Charter to Neumann-Goretti and play for the Saints in girls' basketball.

District 12 executive director Robert Coleman said Prep Charter challenged the transfer, as no student is allowed to switch schools based on athletic reason. But Timbers' mother told the board that a few "nonathletic incidents" made her daughter no longer able to attend the school.

Contact Matt Breen at [email protected].