The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association has notified Signal Mountain High School that its football program is guilty of playing an ineligible player and must vacate all six wins this season.
According to Executive Director Bernard Childress, two TSSAA assistant directors spent several hours at the school conducting interviews Thursday. The TSSAA staff met early Friday morning and Childress faxed the official letter of notice Friday afternoon.
The ineligible player is 6-foot-2, 240-pound running back and linebacker Tim McClendon, who transferred form Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe during the summer and started for Signal Mountain in all seven games this season.
He will not be allowed to play in any more football games for the Eagles.
Whoever at Signal Mountain filled out the online transfer form made a mistake, Childress said. All of our eligibility forms are submitted by the administration of our schools. In this case whoever filled it out clicked yes that the student-athletes new residence is inside Signal Mountains zone. Its not. Once we checked to see exactly where his house is, we realized hes in Brainerds zone, not Signal Mountains, and declared him ineligible immediately.
He had originally been ruled eligible, but the original information we had received was incorrect, so we had to come back and change the status.
Childress added that McClendons athletic eligibility status had nothing to do with the No Child Left Behind law.