FILE PHOTO

Image Credit: PEXELS/Jeandaniel Francoeur

Efforts to create a football program at Okanagan Mission Secondary School in Kelowna came to a screeching halt this spring after its coach was sanctioned for inappropriate spending on players.

The program itself could continue under a two-year probation but will miss the spring training season as it searches for a new coach.

“The violations, as B.C. School Sports would define them, have to do what we call undue influence,” school principal Derek Lea told iNFOnews.ca today, April 25. “That was the initial concern, which had to do with inequitably distributed rewards for student athletes.”

Team captains and leaders were treated to dinners by coach Johannes Van Leener, who was a volunteer coach and not a school district employee.

He also offered cash incentives to some players.

“There were conversations with students who, perhaps, were not sure they wanted to stay because they had other priorities, such as jobs and things,” Lea said. “So he was offering them jobs and paying them for work that, in some cases, was never done to allow them to continue playing football.”

It appears Van Leener offered some students work with his company and paid them without them actually doing any work.

Lea became principal of Okanagan Mission Secondary School last fall so he doesn’t know the full history of the team. As he understands it, football became a sport the school started offering a couple of years ago and was impacted by COVID restrictions.

It was after the season ended last fall that the allegations came to light.

Lea reported his concerns to B.C. School Sports as soon as they were investigated but it took until early April before the provincial organization got back to him and imposed the sanctions.

Van Leener has been suspended from coaching, Lea understands, for five years and has to complete some courses before applying to return.

The school’s probation includes a prohibition against playing exhibition games this spring and participating in a school football jamboree. They are allowed to play league games next fall but not playoff games.

They have been fined $500, with the money coming from the school’s athletic fund that comes from, in part, student fees to play.

Lea expects to be fined another $500 after further allegations that have since come to light about ineligible players being used in a league game against Salmon Arm last fall.

An out-of-province player was also reported to have practiced with the team without being properly registered with the league.

The school has to do three things in order to start playing football again.

One is to draft a thorough oversight plan, which Lea said is pretty much done. Another is to find a teacher sponsor for the team. The athletic director played that role in the past but it must be a separate person as sponsor. Thirdly, a new head coach is needed.

The lack of a coach is preventing the school from even putting a team together this spring to train and practice. They are actively looking for someone to fill that role.

“Our hope would be to have the coach committed this spring so that we can start the process of onboarding them and we can make sure these errors don’t happen again and have everything ready to go so we can hit the ground running in the fall,” Lea said.

Lea can’t say if this kind of thing has happened in high school sports in the past but did say “violations of B.C. School Sports conduct happen all the time.”

“While clearly there is a need for increased oversight and we wished these situations to have not occurred at all, the athletic director and principal at Okanagan Mission have been entirely forthcoming and transparent throughout this process,” Jordan Abney, executive director for B.C. School Sports, said in an emailed statement to iNFOnews.ca. “Sanctions would have been far worse had this not been the case.”

Normally the association does not comment publicly on such matters, Abney said, but an exception was made given the public nature of this case.

“We commend them for their approach to this situation and have faith that they will work hard to ensure their athletics moves forward in a positive and appropriate way which puts the health and safety of their student-athletes first and builds their program in a healthy and sustainable way,” Abney said in the email.

The coach has been suspended indefinitely and has to wait five years to reapply and, then, only after meeting certain conditions, Abney.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Rob Munro or call 250-808-0143 or email the editor. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above. 

News from © iNFOnews, 2022