Naylor files complaint against Bell City

The tiny Naylor School District has filed a complaint with the Missouri State High School Activities Association alleging that some past and present boys basketball players for the Bell City School District didn't meet the association's student residency requirements.

Naylor superintendent Stephen Cookson said the complaint involved residency issues but referred specific questions to the district's attorney, Paul Kidwell of Poplar Bluff, Mo.

Kidwell declined to discuss the specific allegations, saying he wasn't certain whether under MSHSAA rules he could disclose such information. But a source close to the situation said the complaint raises eligibility issues concerning eight basketball players, some of them former players.

Cookson said he personally delivered the written complaint to MSHSAA executive director Kerwin Urhahn on Tuesday.

Under association bylaws, the organization now must investigate the allegations, Cookson said.

Bell City school superintendent Rhonda Niemczyk didn't return phone calls Friday.

The complaint follows a decision by the association's board of directors late last month to punish Naylor, in Ripley County near the Arkansas state line, for alleged residency violations involving the girls basketball and softball teams. The board ordered Naylor to forfeit all its high school girls basketball and softball games played last year, including its girls basketball district championship. The Naylor girls basketball team also is barred from playing in the post-season district basketball tournament this spring.

MSHSAA officials said their investigation found sufficient evidence that the five students didn't reside in the Naylor School District and, as a result, weren't eligible to play on high school teams at Naylor. The board also reprimanded school officials for use of a nonteacher as an athletic coach for girls softball and basketball during the 2005-2006 school year.

Naylor filed a lawsuit against MSHSAA last year over the student residency issue. Among other things, the district argued that under federal law it couldn't divulge students' addresses to MSHSAA without parental permission. Parents of the students in question refused to allow the school to disclose that information. The suit is pending before the Missouri Southern District Court of Appeals in Springfield.

Naylor has slightly more than 400 students, including fewer than 200 high school students.

Cookson said the activities association singled out Naylor while failing to take any action against the Bell City School District over similar residency allegations.

"We are just wanting to make sure that there is some consistency in the way things are handled," he said. "From what we have seen, there is not a lot of consistency."

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education last year found that Bell City had violated student residency requirements as it related to state aid. No allegation was specifically made about basketball players or other student athletes in connection with the DESE investigation.

Urhahn, the MSHSAA director, said in late January his organization never received a complaint regarding Bell City School District student athletes, so MSHSAA didn't investigate.

But Cookson said Friday he asked about the Bell City situation in a meeting with MSHSAA officials a year ago.

Cookson said Naylor's complaint about alleged wrongdoing by Bell City includes information cited in a 15-page letter signed by a Bootheel resident.

Urhahn was out of town Friday and couldn't be reached for comment on the complaint or the letter.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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