MHS athletic department to better monitor players’ academic performance

News broke last Friday that 37 varsity and junior varsity players on the Maricopa High School football team will be ineligible for next Friday’s season opener against Tempe.

All 37 are academically ineligible due to having less than a 2.0 GPA in the spring semester of the previous school year.

 “Students with a GPA below 2.0 for the spring semester would be ineligible until the four and one-half (4.5)-week grading period of the first quarter of the next school year, unless GPA is remedied through summer school,” according to Maricopa Unified School District Governing Board policy.

“With the transition from Cory (Nenaber) to Chris (McDonald) at head coach, some athletes fell through the cracks,” said Mark Cisterna, new athletic director for Maricopa High School.

Cisterna attributes a lot of this to the changes throughout the football program and himself as the new athletic director. Cisterna didn’t arrive on campus until July 1.

All 37 players can potentially be eligible to play by the Homecoming game against Seton Catholic on Sept. 5, as the first grade check of the 2014-15 school year is on Sept. 3 and all who have a GPA above 2.0 are immediately eligible to play.

This difference in school schedules from district to district is part of the reason that new football coach Chris McDonald was unaware of this issue until it was too late.

“The Chandler School District where Chris came from starts their new school year in July, so the first grade check is in mid-August, a few weeks before the season starts,” Cisterna said.

McDonald was previously an assistant coach at Chandler Hamilton High School.

Cisterna explained how the problem will be avoided in the future.

“Our new football staff has an academic coach that is there to monitor the performance of our players in the classroom,” Cisterna said. “We are also trying to set up an after school study hall and players will have a weekly grade check by coaches: these kids are student-athletes and our No. 1 goal is for them to succeed academically.”

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The onus needs to be on the students and parents as well to prevent this from happening in the future according to Cisterna.

“Every parent and student gets a report card,” Cisterna said. “The kids have to be better in the classroom and we need to monitor it better on our end.”

“Sometimes kids are going to fall down,” he said. “It’s our job to pick them back up.”