PREVIOUS COVERAGE | Suspicions arise about Prep’s football team

BRADENTON — The Texas high school football coach penciled the Bradenton Prep Patriots into his school’s 2010 football schedule last March.

Jeff Stine, head football coach and athletic director at Redwater High, considered it just another game on his docket.

“I thought it was high school against high school,” Stine said.

He thinks differently now. Stine learned that seven of the players on Prep’s roster would be ineligible to play football in Texas because of their age.

And two of the players on the school’s roster have already graduated from area high schools, local officials told the Bradenton Herald on Wednesday.

Stine canceled Saturday’s scheduled game against Bradenton Prep — known now as Prep Learning Academy — which was to be played during the 1st Annual Matt Camp Classic, a charity high school game in Gilmer, Texas.

It was after Prep Learning Academy defeated another Texas team last week, Canyon Creek, that Stine got the feeling something wasn’t right. Unable to attain any game film on the Patriots, Stine hoped to get a copy from Canyon Creek’s coaching staff, who told Stine that over the course of the game, some Prep players told the Canyon Creek players they were 19.

In Texas, players can be no older than 18 unless they turn 19 after Sept. 1.

Canyon Creek coaches also gave Stine a roster that they said wasn’t supplied to them until the day after the game.

Stine found that seven of the players on Prep’s roster were not of legal playing age in Texas.

Officials with the Manatee and Sarasota school districts confirmed to the Bradenton Herald on Wednesday that at least two players on the Prep Learning Academy football roster that Stine received after the Canyon Creek game graduated from Manatee/Sarasota public schools in 2010 — Cory Morrow received his diploma from Bayshore High, and Ryan Kruse received his from Sarasota High.

Hendrik Lamprecht, Prep’s CEO, told the Herald he knew “absolutely nothing” about post-graduates being on the football team’s roster. He also said he wasn’t familiar with Kruse, adding he wasn’t on the school’s enrollment sheet, nor was he listed among the players who made the trip to Texas.

Stine, however, saw Kruse play in the film he watched of the Prep-Canyon Creek game. And on Kruse’s Facebook page Wednesday night, there were 18 photos of him wearing a Bradenton Prep football uniform, and there were action shots of him playing in a game. He’s wearing jersey No. 54 — his number on the roster — and the pictures were uploaded to his site at 2:23 a.m. Sunday morning. Kruse’s page also lists him as a 2010 alum of Sarasota High.

Prep Learning Academy’s head football coach, Walt Williams, did not return calls seeking comment. Lamprecht said he told Williams not to speak to the media.

Technically, Prep Learning Academy isn’t breaking any state rules. The school withdrew from the Florida High School Athletic Association in October 2008 after accruing more than $34,000 in fines by violating a number of association bylaws, and therefore, doesn’t have to adhere to the state’s eligibility rules.

That made little difference to Stine.

“I was not about to put my kids in that situation,” Stine said. “There is no way to validate and no way to know the ages of any of the other kids on the team. ... I wasn’t about to put 15-, 16-year-old kids on the same field with players who could be freshmen or sophomores in college.

“If I wanted to play a junior college, I would have scheduled a junior college here in Texas.”

Todd Robison, the charity game’s organizer, said in a statement that when the game was agreed to in the spring, Williams offered to hold out one player because of age, and also volunteered to hold out all the players whose eligibility was questioned by Redwater.

The player’s name was not mentioned in the statement.