Rich Morgan's Marietta, GA team Forfeits 2017 8-5 Season!!

[757FridayNiteZ]

Ineligible players force Marietta team to forfeit last season's wins
Football
By Jami Frankenberry The Virginian-Pilot
Updated 1 hr ago

The Marrietta (Ga.) High School football team led by former Oscar Smith coach Richard Morgan this week was ordered to forfeit all eight of its victories during the 2017 season for using two ineligible players, according to a report by the Marietta Daily Journal.

Morgan was not implicated in the investigation, and the Georgia High School Association did not name him in reporting its findings.

Days before the sanctions became public, longtime Marietta athletic director Paul Hall stepped down to take a teaching position at Marietta Middle School. And Kelly Hastings, Hall’s assistant and the school’s eligibility coordinator, told investigators that she filled out the two students’ eligibility forms and made a clerical error, according to the paper.

The penalty, which included a $1,500 fine and the team being placed on “severe warning status,” was handed down Monday – less than a week after The Pilot reported that Morgan’s team this preseason has landed in some national rankings.

The GHSA found that Marietta had two ineligible players last season – two starters who did not live in the school’s attendance zone. Eligibility forms – completed by Hastings - stated the two players had mothers who were employed at the school, making them eligible to play there.

“We concluded that there were two students for whom GHSA eligibility forms were incorrectly completed by the Marietta High School Athletic Office,” a statement from the school district read. “In each situation, the student in question is a child of a teacher at a Marietta City Schools elementary school and attended MHS through a district policy that permits children of employees to attend an MCS school. It was determined that one student legitimately moved into the Marietta attendance zone at the time of enrollment and later moved outside the MCS attendance zone; the other student never established residency in the MCS attendance zone.”

Jami Frankenberry, 757-446-2376, jami.frankenberry@pilotonline.com

 

[DinwiddieProud]

The first thought that came to my mind is how bad this is on the innocent. Mistake, carelessness, or blatant malfeasence, adults put a bunch of innocent kids in a bad light.

 

[757FridayNiteZ]

Someone must have been digging pretty deep for something like that to have been found out. And/or there had to be a formal complaint about that program, too.

Smith certainly had their complaints about transfers, during his tenure but as far as I know they were all confirmed relocations.

Interestingly, he had 3 Div I defense players transfer out over the summer before his last season at O. Smith. They still made it to the State Title game & took Westfield to triple OT without those guys!

 

[CavsGrad]

Someone must have been digging pretty deep for something like that to have been found out. And/or there had to be a formal complaint about that program, too.

Smith certainly had their complaints about transfers, during his tenure but as far as I know they were all confirmed relocations.

Interestingly, he had 3 Div I defense players transfer out over the summer before his last season at O. Smith. They still made it to the State Title game & took Westfield to triple OT without those guys!

I've been following a national forum and there is a lot of chatter from fans of the traditional Georgia powerhouse schools who are not happy with how Marrietta has turned around so quickly under Coach Morgan. I'm sure Marietta has been watched closely for months. Marietta is absolutely loaded this year, but the scary part is their studs are mostly juniors.

 

[mbonape1]

Someone must have been digging pretty deep for something like that to have been found out. And/or there had to be a formal complaint about that program, too.

Smith certainly had their complaints about transfers, during his tenure but as far as I know they were all confirmed relocations.

Interestingly, he had 3 Div I defense players transfer out over the summer before his last season at O. Smith. They still made it to the State Title game & took Westfield to triple OT without those guys!

Exactly right someone did a deep dive. The honest fact is you can't be an elite program year in and year our unless you are getting transfers. But if the 2 students parents were teachers at the school that seems a bit extreme.