Two Manatee County football coaches have suspensions reduced for recruiting violations
Two of the four football coaches suspended in April for recruiting violations had their suspensions reduced.
Lakewood Ranch High head coach Rashad West’s suspension was trimmed down to three games, while Manatee High assistant coach Dennis Stallard had his dropped to two games, Manatee County athletic director Jason Montgomery said.
Suspensions for Manatee High head coach Yusuf Shakir and Palmetto coach Dave Marino were upheld during a virtual Florida High School Athletic Association Board of Directors meeting Monday, Montgomery said.
The FHSAA levied suspensions of six games for West and Stallard, while tagging Shakir and Marino with eight-game suspensions back in April for visits to each school during the summer of 2019 by Lincoln Memorial Academy football players and coaches, according to an FHSAA report.
“The FHSAA’s stance is that those kids are no longer strictly Palmetto’s kids, because they can choose to go to Bayshore if they want to, coming out,” Montgomery said. “And the other part to that is they’re not all zoned for Palmetto. I think part of that is the charter piece. I think when I looked the other day, there (were) about 70 or 80 kids enrolled there that were zoned between, I believe it was, Manatee, Lakewood Ranch and Parrish in addition to Palmetto.”
The report released in April also issued fines to Manatee and Palmetto, levied a $5,000 salary reduction to each coach and placed the schools on administrative probation.
The Lincoln Memorial Academy visits had Facebook Live video components. Video taken at Manatee and Palmetto lasted for 58 and 57 minutes, respectively, while video at Lakewood Ranch ended after two minutes with Lincoln players getting a tour of football facilities, according to an FHSAA report from April.
An FHSAA investigation into the matter began in January after the schools self-reported potential violations.
‘Unfortunate situation’
“It’s an unfortunate situation,” Montgomery said. “I think we did quite a bit before to try to keep these situations from happening, but we’ve done even more after. We’re working hard trying to move forward and educate our staff so these types of situations don’t happen again.”
West’s suspension covered the spring game, which was not played because of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the kickoff classic game against Crystal River and the regular-season opener against IMG Academy’s varsity team.
With a two-game suspension, Stallard won’t miss any regular season games. His were for the spring game and the kickoff classic.
In addition to their suspensions getting reduced, Manatee High saw its $5,000 fine get cut in half to $2,500, Montgomery said.
All four coaches had their appeals heard through a virtual FHSAA Infractions Appeal Committee. Shakir and Marino needed to go through the Board of Directors on Monday for a final chance to get their penalties lessened, and they were denied.
“I sent stuff to every middle school in the county, charter or ours, after this happened and laying out what our coaches can and can’t do to try to add another layer, so hopefully they’ll be asking … so they don’t solicit from the coaches to have them either come on campus to talk to their kids or get in a situation where their kids can go watch workouts and stuff like that,” Montgomery said.
