An athletic director and principal have been removed from their duties at a Louisiana high school following an investigation into allegations of illegal grade changes for more than a dozen of the school’s football players.
The Louisiana High School Athletic Association found that eight football players at Belaire High School in Baton Rouge, La., were ineligible for not being registered with the LHSAA until after the sixth week of the season despite playing in previous games while two other players were scholastically ineligible, the Baton Rouge Advocate reported.
As a result, the East Baton Rouge Parish school system announced Wednesday that Belaire athletic director Chauncey Moore, who also serves as the school’s boys basketball coach, was stripped of his duties while principal Roy Walker was reassigned within the school system. Football coach Claude Coleman, who was previously suspended, remained on paid leave Wednesday and is still the school’s dean of students, the Advocate reported.
Related: LHSAA Suspends Coaches, Vacates Wins for HS Team
Last month, Coleman and Moore received suspensions for one calendar year from the LHSAA, which also required the school to forfeit all five of its football wins. Walker and Coleman have hired attorneys and declined to comment to the newspaper.
“This is unfortunate news for the student-athletes and the entire Belaire High School community,” East Baton Rouge Superintendent Warren Drake said in a statement last month, “but it is critical that all of our programs are compliant with LHSAA rules and regulations as well as district policy.”
Belaire also was fined $2,000 for violation of scholastic rules and rules regarding the registration of both students and coaches, according to the Advocate. The school was cited for having three coaches on the sideline who were not registered correctly as either faculty or non-faculty coaches, the newspaper reported.
