Deontae Hawkins Eligible for Illinois State Next Year With a Catch
Deontae Hawkins, who originally signed with Wichita State in 2011, will join the Illinois State men’s basketball team this year, but has a couple of hurdles (h/t Jeff Eisenberg of Yahoo! Sports) to being eligible. First, despite a year of prep school, Hawkins is a nonqualifier, and as such will not be allowed to practice or play with the Redhawks (no word on whether Hawkins got a partial initial eligibility waiver so that he could receive a scholarship). That failure to qualify cleared up one part of Hawkins’s move from WSU to ISU by rendering his NLI null and void.
The second hurdle was the Missouri Valley intra-conference transfer rule. That policy applies to any athlete who accepted a scholarship offer (i.e. signed a National Letter of Intent and/or scholarship agreement) and would have required Hawkins to sit out for at least one additional year. But Hawkins was given relief from any additional residency requirement, with one catch:
Hawkins will be permitted to compete for the Redbirds in the 2014–15 season; however, he is required to miss both of ISU’s regular-season games against Wichita State.
Any who follows European soccer will be familiar with loan deals, where a team temporarily sends a player to another team, sometimes in the same league, where they can get more playing time. Those loan agreements normally include a provision that the player cannot play in games against the club that still owns his rights.
Part of the MVC intra-conference transfer rule seems to offer institutions major flexibility in crafting these types of caveats when waiving the intra-conference transfer rule:
If a student-athlete wishes to pursue an intra-conference transfer, the Director of Athletics, or designee, at the initial institution must inform the student-athlete in writing of the condition or [sic] transfer including application or waiver of MVC and/or NCAA transfer rules and, if the intra-conference transfer is not supported, whether the initial institution wishes to have enforced a 2-year or 1-year residency requirement. A copy of the written notice shall be provided to the Conference Office.
Some intra-conference transfer rules are almost iron-clad, requiring the other conference schools to vote on whether they should be waived. In this case it looks like much of the discussion is between the institution and the student-athlete, who can then appeal to MVC committees. This flexibility appears to have transferred over to the conference which was able to craft this compromise.
Find opportunities for athletic scholarships and get connected to college coaches.