Ineligible Player Costs Ballou Its Spot in Semis

Ballou Coach Moe Ware said he was unaware of the investigation until yesterday's ruling. (By Preston Keres -- The Washington Post)

Ballou's football team has forfeited its spot in the D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Association semifinals after an investigation by the D.C. Public Schools' Student Residency Office reported to Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee that a player on Ballou's roster lives in Maryland.

Anacostia, the third-place team in the DCIAA East Division, will take the Knights' place in the playoffs and will face Dunbar next Saturday. Coolidge will play H.D. Woodson in the other semifinal.

The games, originally scheduled for today, were pushed back a week because Anacostia, which thought its season ended Nov. 2, returned its uniforms last Monday and hasn't practiced in a week.

According to a DCPS spokesman, the Student Residency Office began conducting an investigation last month into the Ballou student's residency after a complaint was lodged by a parent of a student at another school. The SRO presented its findings to Rhee's office yesterday.

"This is a very unfortunate situation for the athletes, students and faculty of Ballou, who have worked hard to complete a successful season," Rhee said in a statement. "The school system will conduct a full investigation into this matter to ensure that this type of occurrence does not happen again."

Ballou Coach Moe Ware said his school was informed of the ruling at about 1 p.m. yesterday, less than 24 hours before the semifinals were scheduled to kick off.

"They said [the ineligible player] was under investigation for about a month," said Ware, who added that he had driven the student home to an address in Congress Heights several times. "We didn't even know he was being investigated."

The site of the games, which was originally supposed to be Ballou, will be determined by Tuesday, according to DCIAA Executive Director Allen Chin.

It is the second straight season Ballou's football team has been mired in controversy over eligibility. Last year, questions were raised over the academic eligibility of two of its players. The night before the DCIAA semifinals, then-superintendent Clifford B. Janey ruled that the challenges to the players' grades were not filed in time, rendering the appeal null. Ballou went on to win its first DCIAA title in the Turkey Bowl.

"I'm at a loss for words about this process," Ware said. "They didn't follow any chain of command. The precedent was set a year before on protests. You don't have to have a good memory to remember that."

Anacostia assistant coach Marvin Tucker said that when his team played Ballou on Oct. 26, he noticed a player on the Knights who spent the past two years at Anacostia. Tucker said he knew that player was academically ineligible at the end of last school year, and said he requested an investigation from the DCIAA office.

Chin told Tucker that he was unable to launch an investigation this late in the season, citing D.C. Municipal Regulations, which forbids the DCIAA office from challenging eligibility after "midseason of the sports season involved."

Tucker then sent an e-mail Nov. 6, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, to several city officials, including D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D), seeking help. Gray wrote to Tucker saying he should file a formal set of charges to Rhee.

Tucker said that when he contacted Rhee's office, he learned of the investigation.