Michigan girls basketball coach suspended for texting an eighth-grade recruit
As if you needed one more reason why it's never a good idea for an adult male to be texting an eighth-grade female: It's a recruiting violation.
Grosse Pointe (Mich.) South High girls basketball coach Kevin Richards has been suspended by both the Michigan High School Athletic Association and his own school for sending texts and tweets to an eighth-grade recruit, The Detroit News reported.
MHSAA and the GPSHS administration each suspended Richards for three games apiece, so the seventh-year coach will reportedly miss the first six games of the 2013-14 season.
Richards has led the Blue Devils to back-to-back Class A state championship games, losing in heartbreaking fashion each time -- blowing an 18-point, third-quarter lead in a one-point loss in 2012 and falling in overtime this past season.
A former player at St. Clair County Community College, the 34-year-old Richards has also coached at Coleman (Mich.) High and Macomb (Mich.) L'Anse Creuse North High.
While speculation is rampant about the coach's past recruiting habits, Richards is listed as the President-Elect of the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan on the organization's website. In April 2012, the BCAM issued a questionnaire entitled "Athletic Recruiting and Undue Influence." The very first question reads:
Can high school coaches or their representatives call, email, text, tweet, write or contact athletic recruits?
In bold, the answer is written clearly: "No."
In addition to sending text and Twitter messages to the eighth-grader, Richards also attended her games -- another MHSAA violation, according to the questionnaire.
One Detroit-area administrator suggested to The Detroit News that coaches in his league would have been either been suspended for an entire year or fired for similar infractions.
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