All-Orange County basketball player Evan Battey of Villa Park is ineligible to play in the 2016-17 season.
All eight of Battey’s semesters of athletic eligibility have been used. Battey repeated the ninth grade at Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies – LACES, as the public school often is called. He is going into his senior year at Villa Park.
A hardship request for a fifth year of eligibility – a ninth and 10th semester of eligibility – was denied by the CIF-Southern Section, the governing body for high school sports in Orange County and much of Southern California.
Although Battey did not play sports his first freshman year at LACES, those two semesters, according to CIF-SS by-laws, still would count toward the eight semesters of athletic eligibility that belong to each high school student-athlete. His third and fourth semesters were consumed at LACES during his second freshman year, and this fifth and six semesters were consumed by his sophomore year at LACES. Battey played basketball at LACES during his second freshman year and during his sophomore years.
Thus, Battey exhausted his seventh and eighth semesters of athletic eligibility during his junior year at Villa Park to where he transferred before the 2015-16 school year.
Battey, 6-foot-7 and 235 pounds, was All-County first team last season as a junior. He averaged 24 points per game.
Battey, who is receiving plentiful college recruiting interest, and has a scholarship offer from Cal State Fullerton, can play for club teams during this summer and during the school year.
Villa Park boys basketball coach Kevin Reynolds said Battey will continue to be part of the school’s basketball program as much as possible.
“Evan is a great young man,” Reynolds said. “We are going to give him all of the love and support that we can.”
Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com
