GHSA: 2 Marietta players remain ineligible; 1 ruling overturned
COBB COUNTY, Ga. - Two of the three Marietta High School football players remain ineligible for the 2018 football season. That was the decision of the Georgia High School Association after a two-hour appeal hearing on Friday.
Earlier this week, a Cobb County Superior Court judge sided with a petition filed by Dawson Ellington, Rashad Torrence, and Jalen Hardy asking the court to force the GHSA to reconsider the players’ statuses.
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The Marietta Daily Journal was in Thomaston for the hearing. The paper reported the executive committee ruled Marietta High juniors Rashad Torrence and Dawson Ellington Ellington ineligible for the 2018 football season, but the committed overturned its previous decision on senior Jalen Hardy, who expects to suit up and join his team Friday night.
Earlier this year, the organization determined that Ellington and Torrence were not eligible to play in 2017 because while both of them had parents who worked for the school system, they did not work specifically at Marietta High School. The school, therefore, had to vacate all its wins from last season.
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Hardy transferred to Marietta after the football season but was also determined to be ineligible. The GHSA ruled it was not a “bona fide move” because the student’s entire immediate family did not also make the move, which is required under GHSA bylaws. This despite the purchase of a home and his family filing a homestead exemption.
Yari Lawson, an attorney who represents Ellington said, however, that the students were not given an opportunity to answer to the allegations against them.
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Each of the students is a highly sought-after college football recruit and has received several scholarship offers.
The Blue Devils is scheduled to play Our Lady of Good Counsel, a Catholic high school from Olney, Maryland, at 7:30 p.m. Friday night at Northcutt Stadium.