DMN Weatherford CC sanctioned for dealings with

[OldTimer]

Weatherford College sanctioned for dealings with foreign players

10:12 PM CST on Saturday, December 27, 2003

By JEFF MILLER / The Dallas Morning News

International players have been a staple of Weatherford College's standout women's basketball program for more than a decade. Of the six All-Americans the Lady Coyotes can boast during the last six seasons, five came from Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

But in the last 13 months, Weatherford has run afoul of the NJCAA in some of its dealings with foreign players. On the eve of the 2002-03 season, two freshmen from the Ukraine were ruled ineligible. And last month, the program was sanctioned for exceeding the limit for international athletes on scholarship and for a $200 loan longtime coach Bob McKinley gave to all-conference forward Laura Kizyte of Lithuania.

McKinley is in his 27th season as Weatherford's coach and is also the school's athletic director. He has led the Lady Coyotes to seven conference titles, two regional championships, two appearances in the NJCAA Division I national tournament and one trip to the junior college final four.

School president Don Huff said he's confident McKinley wasn't aware he was violating any rules. He noted that Weatherford's Board of Regents didn't discipline McKinley after it was informed of the violations.

"He didn't do anything intentionally to avoid complying with the rules," Huff said. "I think everybody is very comfortable that he had no intent in doing anything like that."

The NJCAA limits basketball programs to four international scholarship athletes and learned six of the Lady Coyotes on the roster at the beginning of the 2002-03 season were foreign students on scholarship. The women's team will be limited to two foreign scholarship players next season and three in 2005-06.

Kizyte was forced to sit out the team's first four games this season. The Lady Coyotes are 6-6.

McKinley has declined to talk with The News since the NJCAA informed the school of the sanctions. Before the ruling, McKinley acknowledged to The News that he made the loan and identified the amount. He didn't specify its purpose and added that he didn't think lending money to a player was a violation of NJCAA rules.

"If it was, I wouldn't have done it," McKinley said.

Huff said the loan, which school officials learned about from the NJCAA in August, was for emergency dental work and has been repaid.

"I don't know how you deal with that when you've got a kid over here that doesn't have parents, doesn't have the money," Huff said. "The board agreed it's the humane thing to do, but it's not the legal thing to do."

In November 2002, the NJCAA informed Weatherford that freshmen Olena Krasyvoron and Kateryna Polishchyk from the Ukraine could not play for the Lady Coyotes. Each player had signed a contract with Dynamo Kiev, a European team.

McKinley said he believed he had documentation showing the women were eligible to play. He said Krasyvoron didn't inform Dynamo Kiev that she was leaving the team, which prompted the club to challenge the players' college eligibility.

"Her team sent a letter to our national office," McKinley said. "They got mad at her because she didn't come say, 'Hey, please, please, please let me go over there, make my life better, where I can come back and maybe help things be better over here.'

"One of 'em didn't get any money. The other one was supposed to get $50 a month. That's not even enough money to live on. We make kids just as professional over here when we sign them to a scholarship. I don't understand how our national office and the NCAA can sit in judgment on those kids that are signing contracts [for scholarships] over here and then signing contracts over there. I don't understand the difference."

Without Krasyvoron and Polishchyk, Weatherford last season went 22-8 overall and 13-3 to finish second in the NJCAA's Region V. Kizyte was joined on the Northern Texas Junior College Athletic Conference's first team by fellow Lithuanian Sandra Viksryte, who was named the conference Freshman of the Year.