news-record.com

GREENSBORO — In the summer of 2008, Dudley basketball coach David Price walked into the gym at Northern Guilford High and grabbed a seat for a basketball jamboree the school was hosting.

But he didn’t grab just any seat — it was the one right next to Louis Lawson, whose son, Jacob, plays for Northern Guilford’s basketball team.

As Lawson recalled the encounter, Price spent the next several minutes trying to persuade him that Jacob, one of the state’s best basketball players, should transfer to Dudley. Price even flashed a state championship ring he was wearing, telling Lawson that Jacob could someday sport a similar ring if he played for Dudley.

That conversation, which lasted only a few minutes, amounted to recruiting, said Northern basketball coach Stan Kowalewski, who, along with Northern athletic director Derrell Force, filed a complaint with Guilford County Schools.

On the surface, Northern’s case seemed compelling; school officials even included an affidavit from Louis Lawson attesting to Price’s overtures.

But like so many recruiting allegations before it, nothing ever came of Northern’s complaint. Northern officials never even heard back from the school system, according to Kowalewski.

“It’s just so frustrating,” Kowalewski said last week. “Even when you think you’ve got enough evidence, it never seems to stick. It’s always your word against theirs and (the complainant) never wins.”

Recruiting has always provoked a swirl of whispers and rumors in Guilford County, but that volume has increased in recent years. Two weeks ago it reached a crescendo when Guilford County Schools announced it was investigating student eligibility at Northern Guilford.

Sources knowledgeable of the probe say investigators are focusing on whether roughly two dozen students within the football, baseball and boys basketball programs are academically eligible and live within Northern’s district.

Investigators are also trying to determine if any coaches or supporters participated in recruiting those students, a violation of N.C. High School Athletic Association rules.

But if last year’s allegations against Price, who declined to comment last week, and similar complaints of recruiting through the years prove anything, it’s that investigators have their work cut out for them.

That’s because Guilford County rarely disciplines a coach or school for recruiting. Longtime coaches and athletics directors, both active and retired, can’t recall the last time the school system disciplined a coach or school for recruiting.

It’s not just Guilford County that seems to have a hard time proving recruiting violations. In her 19 years at the N.C. High School Athletic Association, deputy executive director Que Tucker is unaware of a single coach or school being formally reprimanded.

“That doesn’t mean (recruiting’s) not going on,” Tucker said. “But the burden of proof is certainly on the accuser, as it should be. People perceive (recruiting) as something that’s clear-cut and easy to prove. It’s just the opposite.”

Interviews with more than a dozen state and local athletics officials indicate roughly 20 formal recruiting complaints are submitted in North Carolina each year. Many of those complaints prove to be unfounded, but high school athletics officials say just as many are forgotten because school systems lack the time and resources to conduct thorough investigations.

Guilford County Schools athletics director Leigh Hebbard declined to comment last week on the issue of recruiting in light of the ongoing investigation at Northern.

Herb Goins, the school system’s athletics director for 12 years before retiring last fall, said he did his best to look into the two or three recruiting complaints he received each year.

“But that job is not set up to be an investigative one,” he said. “When you finish with everything else, you try to devote as much time as possible to someone’s complaint. That’s not always possible. And when you get down to it, it’s almost always, always going to be one person’s word against another. So then what do you do?”

Goins said he did not recall receiving Northern’s recruiting complaint against Price.

The state’s athletics association prohibits coaches from initiating any form of contact with a prospective high school athlete, visiting or entertaining the student, or implying that a high school’s athletics program is superior to any other school through verbal, written or visual presentations.

But the association does not police the rule, said Tucker. That’s the job of local school systems.

The closest a Guilford County coach has come to being disciplined for recruiting came in 2004 when the NCHSAA placed former High Point Central girls basketball coach Kenny Carter on probation.

Carter, accused of recruiting several players to play for the Bison, appealed the decision and was cleared.

Goins said the case is a textbook example of how hard it is to determine if a coach is recruiting. Goins said Carter met with parents at his home and answered their questions about High Point Central. “He didn’t try to persuade anyone to come there,” said Goins. “He just answered their questions. Is that recruiting? Some might think it is and others would disagree.”

The state association has disciplined one program for recruiting. In 2003, the association suspended a Pender County assistant football coach for one year and placed the head coach on probation for a year.

Just how pervasive recruiting has become is debatable in athletics circles. Ragsdale football coach Tommy Norwood said he doesn’t believe recruiting is as rampant as it’s made out to be. “If other coaches are like me, I’ve got a hard enough time trying to convince kids at my own school to come out for the team,” he said. “I don’t have time to look somewhere else.”

Norwood said the Internet, specifically sports blogs, only fuels recruiting rumors. “Every time you turn around someone anonymous is accusing a school or coach. People are paying a whole lot of attention to the Internet when really it’s opinion and not fact they’re reading.”

Page athletics director Rusty Lee said there have always been families willing to “shop their kids around so, yeah, you might get a coach who will listen,” he said.

“If schools are watching over their own programs and make sure their coaches know the rules and that students’ paperwork is in order, you shouldn’t have as many problems. It’s that easy.”

Lee made his remarks on Thursday. The next day, Page was found to have used an ineligible football player during the 2008 season. Proof that, like trying to discipline for recruiting, nothing is ever easy.

Contact Robert Bell at 373-7055 or robert.bell@news-record.com