Bishop McCort athletics, wrestling placed on probation following recruitment investigation
Bishop McCort’s wrestling program has been placed on probation for three years following an investigation into recruitment violations of PIAA by-laws, officials said. D6 Chairman Bill Marshall confirmed to 6 Sports that a verdict had been reached regarding Bishop McCort athletics. Head wrestling...
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Gasoline, meet fire, but a wild story out of District 6, where Bishop McCourt faces the steepest recruiting penalties thought to ever have been levied by the PIAA.
Some quick backstory - Bishop McCourt was tabbed for recruiting violations four or five years ago and their wrestling coach was forced to resign for breaking PIAA rules, so it seems like a lot of the steepness of the penalty is McCourt being tabbed as a repeat offender (and seemingly flying in the face of PIAA enforcement).
What makes the story complicated is the Erik and Mason Gibson angle. Erik was wrestling for Forest Hills (local public school - coached by former Penn State All American Jake Strayer) when he was called a racial slur by a teammate during a tournament. His family was unhappy with the way it was handled by the coaching staff (namely, that it wasn't handled) and filed a complaint against Strayer with the school district.
This is where things get kind of wonky. The Gibson's uncle is Bill Basset, who was running the Ranger Pride club out of the Forest Hills room and coaching their junior high team. Erik and his younger brother Mason are elite, national caliber wrestlers (Mason was a PIAA runner-up as a freshman and is arguably the top rated recruit in the class). Basset's son Bo is currently in 8th grade, but won the Cadet World Title in freestyle over the summer, and has a level of hype for a middle school kid that I have never seen before (and also think is mega-unhealthy, but that's for another thread). When the Gibson incident went down, Bill Basset left Forest Hills middle school program to take the head coaching job at Bishop McCourt. His nephews and kids came with him to McCourt, as did a slew of other Forest Hills wrestlers - Erik Gibson had his transfer blocked by District 6 last week, but Mason, as a freshman, was able to wrestle. And, pretty much every wrestler in District 6 who lives within driving distance of Altoona is starting to transfer in to McCourt. They also have had families move into the area from Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Ohio to train with Basset and wrestle at McCourt. What's interesting from an enforcement standpoint is I think a lot of these wrestlers who have moved in are still in middle school (I know Sam Herring and Jax Forrest - both Super 32 medalists last week - are from the South) and I don't quite know how the PIAA is allowed to enforce that. I'm not sure what is in the "200 pages of evidence" against McCourt, but the intermingling of club athletes and private high schools is something that has altered the competitive landscape of high school wrestling for years.