PEABODY — Bishop Fenwick High School President Tom Nunan side-stepped whether he was standing by his defense of the school after it was banned from MIAA postseason play for 2023-24.
Nunan declined to address an MIAA letter released this week that detailed specific instances in which the school allegedly lied on student-athlete waivers, leading to the ban.
In response to several questions from The Item on Thursday about allegations in the letter, Nunan wrote a one-sentence statement.
“We are working tirelessly on behalf of our school and our students to discuss this situation further with the MIAA,” Nunan wrote to The Item.
The letter, released Monday, contains a notice of postseason ineligibility sent to Nunan, former Principal Cecilia Marquez, and Athletic Director Scott Connolly, detailing the specifics of Fenwick’s waiver-application infractions and subsequent reasoning for punishment.
The letter was released roughly an hour before Nunan and the school’s Board of Trustees Chair Neil Harrington fielded questions and comments from parents and student-athletes in a meeting in the school’s auditorium.
At the meeting, Nunan said he reviewed the MIAA’s letter, but said he changed nothing in regard to the notes he prepared for the meeting.
“We are here because we are fully transparent with our community and we simply want to let the kids play,” Nunan said at the meeting, days after the ban was announced on July 21.
In the six-page letter, MIAA Executive Director Robert Baldwin laid out the information and analysis of multiple instances that led to the MIAA’s decision.
“The board determined Bishop Fenwick’s conduct was sufficiently serious, egregious, and repeated to warrant imposition of the discipline outlined in Rule 87.6.4,” a portion of the letter reads. “Therefore, Bishop Fenwick will be ineligible to participate in the MIAA postseason tournament play for all sports in school year 2023-2024.”
The letter advised Nunan, Marquez, and Connolly that they were required to attend an MIAA Board of Directors Meeting on Accountability on May 17 to discuss issues relating to inaccuracies in information the school provided to the MIAA on a transfer student via an Aug. 2, 2022 Waiver Application, as well as two issues with Fenwick’s transparency on the same matter.
“Bishop Fenwick provided misinformation throughout the process, including the details in the submitted application, and statements made during two separate Eligibility Appeal Board hearings held on Nov. 22, 2022 and March 8, 2023,” Baldwin wrote. “This is in direct violation of the MIAA Rule 87.6 ‘Accountability.’”
The letter said that the MIAA came to the decision “based on all of the facts and circumstances including Bishop Fenwick’s repeated failure to comply with MIAA’s rules and to accept responsibility for the misinformation or lack of information.”
The MIAA pointed out that under Rule 32.1, principals and athletic directors of schools must “read entirely, understand, and abide by, and be prepared to enforce all rules, regulations, and policies contained within (the MIAA) handbook.” The MIAA added that the rules also state it is the responsibility of the principal or “designee” to determine the eligibility of student-athletes, with any waiver applications being the responsibility of the school principal per MIAA Rule 87.1.
The letter laid out the facts of two different instances the MIAA cited as reasons for disciplinary action.
One of the instances stemmed from a fifth-year waiver request submitted by the school. The initial request was denied by Baldwin, as Fenwick failed to submit documentation that the student could not attend school due to illness or an accident, per MIAA rules.
The school appealed the decision to an Eligibility Appeal Board panel and on Nov. 22, 2022, the waiver was rejected unanimously. The EAB stated that “Bishop Fenwick characterized (student one) as ‘a classic Bishop Fenwick’ athlete — a description that lends little insight into (student one)’s actual athletic ability.”
The school, which was pressed by the MIAA in the May 17 EAB executive session on where they gathered information, stated that it relied on and used information gathered by former Athletic Director David Woods and from the family of the student.
Per MIAA rules, Fenwick was required to list any performance-based recognition the player received on the waiver. Fenwick said the player had never been a league All-Star.
During the EAB hearing, the student told board members, with Fenwick representatives present, that he played the infield and outfield and never mentioned he pitched or won the Pitcher of the Year award for the 2022 spring season.
However, the MIAA found through publicly-available information, including the student’s personal Twitter account, that the student “appears to be an accomplished pitcher, and even received the Pitcher of the Year award from Bishop Fenwick last year.”
Before a second EAB hearing, it was suggested Fenwick read documents that had been sent to the school on Feb. 28 and March 2 containing public documents and statistics on the player.
In an email sent March 2, Baldwin notified the school that “efforts to mislead the MIAA, including any of its personnel or those on the EAB, would also be a serious violation of Rule 87.6. Failure to comply with Rule 87.6 or any of the MIAA’s rules is a serious matter and may result in severe consequences for both the MIAA member school and/or its students.”
The EAB unanimously denied the appeal after the second hearing, citing in its decision that the appeal process was “riddled with contradictory and misleading information, and a severe failure on Bishop Fenwick’s part to do its due diligence before filing a waiver application.”
Information received from the unnamed high school that the player had originally attended included his participation in seven varsity games and one junior varsity game in his freshman year, along with dressing for and attending all varsity games except for four that season and being listed on the 2019 MIAA postseason baseball-tournament roster.
When he landed at Fenwick for the spring 2021 season, the student played in all 22 games, starting in 21 of them and winning the school’s Pitcher of the Year Award.
Another incident identified by the MIAA as warranting disciplinary action related to a letter received by the MIAA dated April 23, 2022 from an anonymous “concerned” parent, detailing how her son had been cut from the varsity baseball team at Bishop Fenwick and a seventh-grade student was allowed to play on the team.
The student’s playing time was reported in an unnamed media outlet, and the MIAA found it to be “a clear violation of MIAA Rule 53,” which states that middle school students are required to be under the “jurisdiction” of Fenwick’s principal.
The MIAA said that even if the partnership between the middle school and Fenwick was approved, Fenwick would still need to obtain a Middle Level Participation Waiver, which would have only permitted the student to play on junior varsity teams and not at the varsity level.
The MIAA wrote that they asked Nunan to investigate and he said he found no violation of the rules, though the MIAA’s assistant director said Fenwick’s relationship with the middle school the student was from could potentially be a violation of a rule that “prohibits private agreements to evade the MIAA’s rules.”
The school was told to “immediately implement the correction procedures required by MIAA Rules 86 and 86.2″ which deem that if a school uses an ineligible student in any interscholastic contest, such contest shall be forfeited to the opposing school.
The seventh-grade student was deemed ineligible due to his playing time at the varsity level and Fenwick was forced to forfeit all games the athlete played in, which they appealed and were denied May 10, 2022.
Fenwick was later denied in a Feb. 8 executive session when attempting to obtain a waiver allowing the school to play the middle school’s players on its teams, with the MIAA stating it found Nunan’s comments that the players would only play on junior varsity teams inconsistent with “facts in the earlier case.”
Nunan declined to comment on direct questions related to the MIAA’s letter and its contents when he was contacted by The Item.
