Details, not intent, at heart of Bartlett elgibility ruling

I should make a couple of things clear today right from the start.

First off, I have never known Bartlett girls basketball coach Denise Sarna to be anything but aboveboard; a fine educator and coach who truly cares about her job and the children she teaches.

I have also always had great respect for Dan Kallenbach, Bartlett's athletic director. He and I have been professional colleagues for many years and I don't believe he would ever knowingly advocate breaking an IHSA rule.

I do not know Kevin Skinkis, Bartlett's principal, but I've been told by many that he's a man of great integrity.

I don't know the Santos family well, either, but I do know Ashley Santos is a very talented basketball player for a high school freshman.

I also know that whether Bartlett's record from this past season is recorded as 17-11 or 0-28 won't mean a hill of beans to anyone in 20 years.

One more thing I know is that residency and guardianship issues keep the IHSA staff busy above and beyond any other issue in high school sports.

What I hope is that the developments this week that caused the IHSA ruling that Bartlett has to forfeit those 17 wins becomes a lesson to everyone involved in dotting your i's and crossing your t's and knowing exactly what the rules are.

Assuming anything in life without being darn sure your assumptions are accurate is what puts people in these predicaments.

To recap, the Santos family lives in Elgin. Joe Santos, Ashley's father, is on the girls basketball coaching staff at Bartlett, a fact we must point out but a fact that we have no evidence of meaning anything in this situation.

According to the Santos family attorney, Scott Larson, the Santoses have an elderly family member who is sick and lives out of the country. The possibility exists, Larson said, that Ashley's mom and dad would have to leave the country on short notice and for an extended period of time. For that reason, the Santoses transferred guardianship of Ashley and her younger sister to a family in Bartlett and Ashley enrolled at Bartlett High School, where she became one of the star players on the Hawks' varsity basketball team.

We have no reason or proof to dispute any of the above and the myriad commenters on dailyherald.com should be ashamed of themselves for suggesting otherwise without concrete proof. And if they have concrete proof to prove otherwise, be upfront and present it.

The problem here became one of Bartlett and Elgin Area School District U-46 officials misinterpreting the IHSA bylaws concerning guardianship.

This is the IHSA bylaw concerning residence, verbatim from the IHSA Web site:

3.031 Public School Students: Students attending public member schools shall be eligible at the public high school in which they enroll, provided:

3.031.1 They reside full time with their parents, custodial parent or guardian appointed by a judge of a court having proper jurisdiction, or they currently and for at least the last two years prior to the student's enrolling in high school, have lived with another family member or relative who has provided full support and adult supervision for the student, as though they were the guardian, within the boundaries of the public school district in which the high school they attend is located ...

Note the words guardian appointed by a judge of a court ... unfortunately for the Santoses, Larson said, they were never told the guardianship they transferred needed to be court ordered.

Here is the IHSA's definition of legal guardianship, again verbatim from the IHSA Web site.

Q. What is legal guardianship, and how must it be documented when requesting an eligibility ruling?

A. Legal guardianship entails issuance of Letters of Guardianship of a student's person or person and estate by a court. It must be an order signed by a judge and/or the clerk of the court as the judge's representative. A file stamped copy of the Letters of Guardianship court order, along with a copy of the petition filed with the court at the hearing seeking that order and other evidence the court had to determine appointment of the guardianship, must be attached to each request for an eligibility ruling involving a change in legal guardianship. (Bylaws 3.030 and its subsections and 3.040 and its sub-sections).

One of the first questions that came to mind Wednesday was why the IHSA has a stricter policy than what is allowed for by state law, which basically says a short-term guardianship (up to 365 days) does not need to be court ordered. Illinois schools, U-46 among them, allow for transfers of guardianship without them being court-ordered.

"Our membership has wanted a more stringent rule because we want to make sure people are transferring guardianship for the right reasons and not just to participate in sports," IHSA Executive Director Marty Hickman said Thursday. "Court appointed guardianships offer a different level of scrutiny and it's a higher standard."

And in this day and age of some parents obsessing over which school their kids play sports at, the IHSA, in this opinion, has every right to hold schools to a higher standard.

And parents have the right to expect their school administrators are aware of the rules. Clearly, Bartlett administrators made a mistake in this case by either not reading the rule completely or by misinterpreting it. But if there were just a milligram of doubt, someone at Bartlett should have made sure the i's were dotted and the t's were crossed.

"We had documents we felt satisfied the requirements but there's a different standard to participate in sports," said Pat Bronpato, U-46's Chief Legal Officer, on Thursday. "The documents the student had were sufficient for residency in U-46 and for her to attend Bartlett High School, but the IHSA said the documents weren't sufficient for her to play basketball."

Each high school principal in Illinois is that school's official representative to the IHSA. Thus, the ultimate responsibility to know the IHSA bylaws inside and out rests in each principal's office. Skinkis has chosen not to comment on this issue other than to say, via e-mail, "We're disappointed in the decision but we'll abide by it."

The Santos family should be disappointed in the people who told them they were doing everything right. This particular IHSA rule is not the least bit murky, as many IHSA rules tend to be.

"Our rule is very clear," Hickman said. "It says that it must be a court-appointed guardian. Quite simply this is a matter of the school not understanding our rule. Had the school communicated more directly with us or had a better understanding of the rule (Santos) would have had a guardianship that would have made her eligible."

So Hickman made the ruling that Bartlett has to forfeit its 17 wins. Unfortunately, Ashley Santos, a fine 15-year old young lady, now has to endure the fallout of adult mistakes. But to those bloggers and commenters who insist the media, including the Daily Herald, shouldn't have used Santos' name, please think about this: It's OK for the media to glorify teenage athletes when they score 20 points and win games, but it's not OK to use an athlete's name when something goes wrong?

One of the inherent risks of playing high school sports is that your name will be in the newspaper. If you're good, your name will be in the newspaper a lot. But there's no guarantee that every time your name is in the newspaper it's going to be because you did something good. Every high school athlete needs to remember that as they get older.

Hickman had originally ruled Santos ineligible for next year because she competed this season. Fortunately, the IHSA board of directors has left the door open for Ashley to be eligible next year, as long as the proper court appointed guardianship is established.

And, finally, we hope that every school administrator, at Bartlett and anywhere else, who has paid attention to this situation reads the IHSA bylaws completely and thoroughly before making decisions.

People knock the IHSA a lot. But in this case, the association's bylaw, at least in this opinion, leaves little to no room for doubt. Agree with it or not, as Hickman said, the rule is crystal clear.

It's just sad that good people have had to suffer because of this.

jradtke@dailyherald.com