The three student-athletes will be allowed to play for GHS
San Jose – The wait is over.
And the decision is Spencer Ford, Lorenzo Dobson and Javin Charlot are cleared to play high school basketball this season at Gilroy. The players made their Mustang debut Friday against San Lorenzo Valley in the Aptos Seascape Classic.
Ford, a senior, and Dobson, a junior, attended Milpitas High School last year. Charlot attended Oak Grove.
The decision was handed down Friday by the Central Coast Section following a lengthy meeting in the CCS-CIF office in San Jose. It was decided by a panel of Orlando Smith, professor at San Jose State and a former high school principal; Michael Peterson, president of Serra High School, and April Scott, principal of Monta Vista.
“I want to put to rest we did nothing wrong,” said Tanya Charlot, Javin’s mother and one of four parents present at the meeting. “Everything was done by the book. The speculation and rumors can be put to rest.”
The meeting at the CCS offices was attended by Jonathan and Sandra Ford, William Dobson and Charlot. Their sons were at the office 20 minutes before the meeting started.
“The $64,000 question to frame the whole context of this meeting is how did three basketball players with the same AAU coach end up at the same school in the same year?” Smith said, addressing the parents. “In your minds, how does that look?”
Jonathan Ford was first to respond, noting, “As an outsider looking in, I would agree with you. I think when you talk with the parents (individually), you’ll understand. I only met the Charlots one month ago.”
The Fords were especially animated during the meeting since their son is the only one of the three who is not residing in the Gilroy Unified School District. The Fords are former Gilroy residents who moved north for occupational reasons.
And they insisted that the reason their son enrolled at GHS had to do with academic reasons, and pointed proudly to his grade point average, which is up more than a point from last year.
“We couldn’t even get him up for school, and his academic progress was not what we wanted,” Sandra Ford said of her son’s stay at Milpitas.
“He is so excited to go to school now that he wakes me up in the morning to take him to school,” Jonathan Ford said. “And he is an honor roll student now.”
In fact, all were academically eligible long before Friday’s decision. Ford and Charlot are each at a 3.0 GPA or above.
According to CCS commissioner Nancy Lazenby-Blaser, there was never any question that the three student-athletes had completed the proper paperwork. The question was whether they were “unduly influenced,” or “recruited.”
The parents were adamant that wasn’t the case.
“My son struggled for three years to get his grades straight,” Jonathan Ford said. “We did whatever we could to get that straightened out. As far as her (pointing to Charlot), she was able to afford to buy a home.”
And William Dobson said that his son wasn’t getting the proper guidance academically, either.
Milpitas coach Steve Cain was not at the meeting. Neither were any coaches or administrators from Oak Grove. Milpitas principal Chuck Gary and athletic director Jeff Lamb were present and among those questioned by the panel.
Gilroy principal James Maxwell, athletic director Jack Daley, head basketball coach Bud Ogden and assistant basketball coach Jeremy Dirks were all questioned at the meeting, as was AAU coach Kort Jensen.
“The guys were all excited,” Charlot said of the Friday afternoon call from the CCS declaring the eligibility of the student-athletes. “The boys didn’t deserve to have to go through this. They did nothing wrong.”
