A Player Rises Through the Cracks

Again, Williams needed a school. Holder said Williams and the rest of the players were sent home over the Christmas holidays. When they returned in early January, Holder said they were enrolled at Lutheran High School at Tabernacle Lutheran Church in West Philadelphia. The players had been at the school for about five days when the church's fellowship hall caught fire on Jan. 16, 2002.

Left without a building, the school closed.

McCullough and other players left Philadelphia and enrolled elsewhere. But Williams and 18 other students stayed, Holder said.

Holder said he and Schofield opened their own school in mid-February at a rowhouse on West Jefferson Street where some of the players lived. McCullough and Mills said the players lived there without electricity at times. "It was a joke," McCullough said.

Neither Holder nor Schofield has a background in education. Holder was a practicing lawyer until his law license was suspended by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on March 30, 2001.

Schofield told The Post that he had a degree from Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology, a two-year college in Lancaster, Pa. But an official at the school said this week that Schofield had never enrolled there.

Holder said they called the school Lutheran High, even though it had no association with the previous school. Holder said the school had four instructors, including his wife, Valerie Holder, who taught chemistry.

Schools in Philadelphia are required to register with the Pennsylvania Department of Education to ensure they are meeting the 180-day attendance requirement. But no school named Lutheran High at the address of the players' rowhouse was registered with the state for that school year, according to state records.

Holder said the students were given grades for the entire school year because they had been able to complete the necessary course work even though they had not gotten grades the first semester from Celestial and had missed one month in the second semester because of the fire. "We worked Saturdays and later because we lost a few weeks," he said.

Schofield said Williams passed the five core courses he needed.

The next fall, Williams enrolled at George Washington.

Warnings Unheeded

A few months earlier, Mills had read in a newspaper article that Butler, one of the former Celestial players, had signed with Temple. She said she wrote a letter of warning to the Clearinghouse. "Please be advised that Mr. Butler received no grades from the Celestial Preparatory School. He registered, but did not attend classes," Mills wrote in a July 16, 2002, letter, a copy of which she provided to The Post.

When she received no response, she also called the Clearinghouse to make sure no other former Celestial players had been given academic credit for the 2001 fall semester. Again, no answer.

"I called them and they wouldn't return my calls," Mills said. "It was like they were ignoring me."

Lennon said he was not allowed to speak about the case.

Lennon said the NCAA is investigating the validity of more than 5,000 prep schools across the country. A final report is due in April. Among the schools being checked is Lutheran Christian Academy, a different school than Lutheran High, where Schofield is the basketball coach and Holder is listed as the principal in the school's September 2003 registration with the state of Pennsylvania. The school was the subject of a Post investigation last month into possible academic fraud. The Post reported Schofield is the school's only employee, that the school has no buildings of its own and is held in two rooms of a community center. A former player told The Post the school had no teachers or textbooks and players rarely attended class. Two weeks later, the New York Times reported similar allegations.

More than a dozen former Lutheran Christian players are now playing collegiate basketball. Among them is Maureece Rice, who was signed by George Washington two years ago. When asked about his relationship with Hobbs, Holder said they have met on several occasions and he has visited George Washington's practices. Holder said he plans to attend Williams's graduation.

George Washington officials declined to say from what high school Williams graduated. The team's media guide and Web site, which list the final high schools of every Colonial player, has Celestial Prep listed for Williams. Sports information director Brad Bower said he could not comment on why Celestial is listed for Williams.

"I have great confidence in Coach Hobbs and the university's admissions policies for student-athletes," George Washington President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg said in part of a statement that was issued to the media and later shared with alumni on Friday. "I trust Coach Hobbs."

Because George Washington receives more than 20,000 applications annually, Chernak said it would be impossible for the school to check the legitimacy of each school on a transcript. Chernak said nearly every student-athlete being considered for admission is interviewed by eight university officials outside of athletics to determine their character and communication skills.

"The presumptive assumption we make when we're recruiting athletes is we take the official transcripts, the SAT scores, all of the requirements for core courses and grade-point average and it goes to the NCAA Clearinghouse," Chernak said. "If the Clearinghouse, and in some cases this happens, says, 'No, look, it's not a reputable school or we're not clearing it or we have questions about the transcript,' there have been some people who have been declared that they can't play or can't get a scholarship. But once the NCAA Clearinghouse generally says, 'We've reviewed it, it's fine,' then the presumptive assumption at that point in time is it's fine. There would be no reason to question it."

Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.