MIDVALE — A Utah High School Activities Association panel didn’t like the involvement of an Orem assistant football coach in an all-star league, but it didn’t think his influence violated the state’s recruiting rules.
A panel of principals, who also granted hardship waivers to four football players in separate hearings, asked UHSAA attorney Mark Van Wagoner to write a letter to Orem High asking the school to more clearly delineate when and how its coaches can be involved in community, Little League or Super League programs.
“The structure of having a paraprofessional (non-teacher) coach in the position of perhaps exerting influence beyond the ordinary over kids that otherwise might not go to Orem, is not something of which we approve,” Van Wagoner said. “But the panel could not find substantial evidence of undue influence. The panel felt like there was influence, influence that should not have been involved, but not sufficient to fine somebody or suspend them.”
The panel asked Van Wagoner to send a letter to Orem High seeking a change in the way the school oversees coaches who don’t teach at the school.
“(The panel) asked me to send a letter that suggests the school change the way they deal with this,” Van Wagoner said. “If it were to come up again, and the structure hadn’t changed, the association would look upon it as something that was a pattern that would add weight to the claim that it was undue influence.” The issue was brought to the hearing panel by Timpview principal Todd McKee and Pleasant Grove principal Tim Brantley. Brantley said parents brought the issue to him after they saw eighth-graders, who lived in Pleasant Grove boundaries, in a picture tweeted from a recruiting scout of a group of players in Orem jerseys at Utah football practice in April. One of the players in that picture, Riki Peters, played football for Pleasant Grove as a freshman and sophomore.
Peters has enrolled at Orem High and was one of the four players granted a hardship waiver from the same panel on Thursday.
Orem assistant coach Jeremy Hill said he was given a list of players to bring to the practice by the recruiter. He gave the young men Orem High football jerseys for a photo and then collected them after the picture. He said that was a mistake and wouldn’t happen again, but added that he didn’t choose the young men invited, nor did he have any control over the experience they had at the practice.
There was also a trip with Football University, which sponsors an all-star team called Team Utah, that traveled to Arizona in December. Hill was the coach of that team, but he said the main reason he went was because his son was involved. He said he and the rest of Orem High’s staff had been fired at that time, so he had no affiliation with the Tiger football program when he was coaching the all-star team, which included players from a number of Utah County schools.
Hill denied trying to sway any player to choose Orem, although one of his son’s friends did opt to attend a junior high in Orem and is now playing football at Orem High School as a freshman. Puka Nacua has an older brother playing at Timpview, Sampson, who is a senior this season.
The issue for both Timpview and Pleasant Grove coaches is that assistant coaches for a high school program could exert influence even without trying if they coach middle school aged players in these all-star or super leagues.
The smallest token — a T-shirt — could be misinterpreted.
“The truth is, I don’t even blame the young men,” Brantley said. “It’s such a flattering thing. … It’s almost impossible to not want to accept. Even the parents, there’s so much respect and excitement to be a great athlete, and I think these kinds of things make the young men feel like, ‘This is my chance to try and make the big time.’”
The same panel also heard four transfer hearings — one of which was related to the undue influence hearing. In that case, Riki Peters was granted a hardship after his parents moved from Pleasant Grove boundaries into Orem boundaries. The hearing occurred because of the picture that was tweeted where Peters is wearing the Orem jersey at the Utah practice, and also because the address given to the UHSAA was in Timpanogos boundaries.
Pookie Maka was granted a hardship waiver to transfer from Woods Cross to Cottonwood. Maka’s parents said they transferred him to the Academy of Math Engineering and Science, a charter school housed in the Cottonwood High building, because he needed help academically if he wants to take advantage of the dozens of scholarship offers he has. His parents said they weren’t aware that he could lose his eligibility to play football if he transferred schools.
"To be quite honest, I wasn't thinking about (football) when I went to approach (AMES principal) about his program," Maka's mom, Emali Maka, said, noting that they'd tried a number of programs at Woods Cross without much success. "I tried just about everything a mother could. Ultimately, for me, to see he was suffering with even the motivation to go to school, he had to have the door opened to him somehow."
The senior defensive end was emotional as he talked about what it would mean to him to lose football.
“Football is the one thing I love most,” Maka said.
The panel also granted hardship waivers to junior Daniel Loua and senior David Tulaga, who transferred from Jordan to Bingham. David and Bonney Fui took custody of both boys at separate times at the request of family members. The family moved from Draper to South Jordan and the boys changed schools.
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