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Breaking: Lake Brantley Players Have Been Ruled Ineligible, Will Forfeit Games

Written by Lee Roggenburg on . Posted in .
  Based on information obtained by FLN Lake Brantley was found to have used two ineligible players and has admitted it to the FHSAA. The two players will not play the rest of the season and Lake Brantley will have to forfeit the games the players played in.  Lake Brantley competes in District 9, which only has four teams, all of which LB has already played this season, but only one of which was played before the issue came out. So if the ineligible players were benched prior to the last two their district record will be 2-1. Self-reporting an eligibility violation does not automatically cause a team to miss the playoffs and since the District has only four teams LB will be participating. FLN can report that the original anonymous report sent in to the FHSAA was from people familiar with the potential ineligibility and that it stemmed from the two player’s non-school team participation and subsequent transfer to Lake Brantley for the season.  A housing arrangement was made by the family to allow the two players to establish residency in the Lake Brantley school district and the players do in fact live in it.  So the residency eligibility issue, which was the first line of query at the start of the school year, did not turn up any violation.  The complaint filed early in the season later turned to the ‘follow the coach’ rule when the season started. After being informed of the filed complaint at the start of the season the FHSAA contacted the Lake Brantley AD Jerri Kelly, who initiated a review of the issue.  AD Kelly then determined that an eligibility issue was violated and directed Coach Brian Theiss that the two players were no longer eligible.  The timeline for that decision looks to be somewhere around March 11th, give or take a few days.  On March 7th, LB defeated Boone 17-8 to go to 6-0 on the season and did not play again until the March 12th upset at Seminole.  Given that timeline and that upset it looks like LB will have to forfeit 6 games, making their current record 4-7 going into last night’s Hagerty game. We have attempted to reach Lake Brantley AD Jerri Kelly for comment but have not been able to do so at this time.