Now the WC AD may be involved...

From the Observer...

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools launched an "immediate investigation" shortly before West Charlotte's playoff game Friday night that involves the school's athletics director.

The focus: whether he had any connection to the use of a false address by a player who had been removed from the team earlier in the day.

The outcome could force West Charlotte to forfeit its 13 victories in the season that ended Friday night with a 10-8 loss to Independence in a state semifinal playoff game.

The new investigation follows the announcement Friday morning that Nicholas Mata, a senior wide receiver, is ineligible. He was dismissed from the team after CMS determined he does not live at the address his family had given the school system to prove residency.

Independence High also lost a football player Friday -- its second of the playoffs -- and CMS handed out other sanctions involving winter sports teams. The punishments came after a series of interviews, record checks and home visits by CMS, prompted by a two-month Observer investigation.

After CMS announced those actions, the Observer found public records that show the false address for Mata belongs to in-laws of West Charlotte's athletics director, Masanori Toguchi. During an intense series of checks the past two weeks about the eligibility of Mata and some other players, the athletics director -- who is largely responsible for verifying players' eligibility -- apparently never told CMS the home belongs to his wife's grandmother.

"The key people doing the investigation had no knowledge of it," said CMS spokeswoman Nora Carr.

She said it was premature to speculate why the district's investigators didn't know. She would not say whether the athletics director shared the information. "We're getting into a potential personnel matter," she said.

Toguchi told the Observer shortly before kickoff Friday night that the home was in his wife's side of the family, declining to comment further.

This is Toguchi's first full year at West Charlotte and as an athletics director. He started in May after leaving Harding University High, where he was a wrestling coach.

Transfers from Olympic

Mata played regularly for West Charlotte. He is one of four members of the team who played last year at Olympic High.

In April, Olympic's coach was hired to lead West Charlotte. The coach, Maurice Flowers, would not discuss eligibility questions this week.

The Observer has tried researching the eligibility of the other former Olympic players. One appears to live in the West Charlotte attendance area and is eligible. On the other two, the newspaper checked public records and visited the addresses but could not confirm whether the students live there. CMS says they are eligible.

"We have been very, very thorough, and we're very, very confident we have identified every situation where there is an issue," Carr said Friday morning, before the new investigation was launched.

Attempts to reach Mata's father, Albert Mata, were unsuccessful, including messages left with his sons, and visits to a home outside the West Charlotte attendance zone that public records show is where the father lives.

Nicholas Mata declined to discuss eligibility issues shortly before Friday night's kickoff, but said the decision to remove him from the team was "heartbreaking."

"We played 13, 14 games this year, and the game before the championship, I get pulled," he said. "They kicked me out for the last few games of my high school career."

Mata stood in the front row of the stands -- "I can't even really be there with my team," he said. He wore a gray sweatshirt that said "Mata" on the back. His No. 16 jersey was hanging on a fence behind the end zone.

 

And this from another in the Observer

Solomon Walker, the father of the Independence player removed Friday, said he was disappointed by the decision to kick Dominique off the team. He said CMS officials did not give him an explanation.

"I disagree with the decision," Walker said Friday afternoon. "Everything (he and Dominique did) was done legit." He declined to comment further.

Walker works at Independence as a teacher's assistant and the junior varsity boys' basketball coach.

The Walkers live in the Garinger High zone, according to public records obtained by the Observer. The address they had on file with CMS is in the Independence zone. As the child of a CMS employee, Dominique can attend his father's school but must take other steps to play sports.


Now the reasoning behind Indy not having to forfeit was that no one in the school was aware. So dad worked at the school and they still didn't know? Double standard=South Meck is sent home, Indy plays on.