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Bellevue football team banned from postseason play for four years

Penalty is part of sanctions placed on program by KingCo Conference

The Columbian
Published: June 7, 2016, 7:16pm

The KingCo Conference imposed several penalties on the Bellevue High School football program Tuesday, including banning the successful program from postseason play for the next four years, the Seattle Times reported.

The KingCo athletic directors found a “preponderance of evidence” that Bellevue violated rules by recruiting athletes to the school, coordinated payments for athletes, and that Bellevue boosters paid tuition of athletes to a for-profit alternative school, the Times said.

The KingCo also accepted Bellevue School District’s resolution that head coach Butch Goncharoff’s contract will not be renewed, as well as the contract of his top assistant. Both coaches are said to have violated the WIAA rule that stipends paid to coaches must not exceed $500 without board approval.

In addition to the postseason ban, the KingCo also ruled the Bellevue cannot receive outside donations to its football program for four years, cannot play non-league games the next two seasons and can’t play out-of-state opponents for four years. Also the conference placed stricter guidelines and oversight on incoming transfer students for the next two years.

Goncharoff, speaking at a Bellevue School Board meeting Tuesday night, asked the board to fight the sanctions.

“This is wrong,” Goncharoff was quoted as saying. “This has been a setup since Day 1 … Do not hurt these kids.”

All of this comes one day after the team’s wealthy booster club vowed to bring lawsuits against the school district and the WIAA to protect the team from sanctions.

Booster club president John Connors told the Times that he saw litigation as an option that would provide the team with due process.

“If we did not think we had the facts and truth on our side, we would not spend the time and money on this process,” said Connors, a former Microsoft executive and current board member at Nike.

The Bellevue School District in its self-report only found a violation in the funds Goncharoff and assistant coach Pat Jones received from the booster club.

It recommended the termination of the two coaches as the only penalty, finding no evidence of any other alleged violations noted in an independent investigation launched by the WIAA earlier this year.

The school district is planning to appeal the decision by the KingCo Conference.

“We believe that these sanctions are too severe and not in line with previous sanctions of similar violations,” the district said in a statement.

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