MECHANICSBURG — A PIAA Board of Appeal unanimously upheld District 2’s ruling that two Wyoming Valley Conference student-athletes are ineligible to play football at Berwick this season.
It was ruled by the district in June that Jules and Damon Beckhorn transferred from Nanticoke Area to Berwick for athletic reasons, which is against PIAA rules.
The Beckhorns appealed the decision, and after nearly two-and-a-half hours of testimony Wednesday that was closed to the public and media, the state’s athletic appeals board found the same result as District 2 in a 5-0 vote.
Pottsville hosts Berwick on Sept. 11 in Week 2 of the regular season.
The Beckhorns were represented by a new attorney in the hearing, Steven Hoffman, who practices in Allentown.
After the vote was announced, Hoffman said he and the family were disappointed.
“We believe this has been wrongly decided based on hearsay based on a Facebook post that nobody has been able to establish was written by Damon,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman said there was no new evidence presented Wednesday, and one of his main arguments was around the Facebook post.
On an account under Damon’s name, the post read “Berwick football coach on my couch talkin (sic) to my parents” and was made before the two students transferred.
Hoffman said Damon denies writing the post.
Representatives from both Nanticoke Area and Berwick were in attendance Wednesday, and the schools have each previously voiced they thought the transfers were made with athletic intent. Nanticoke Area head football coach Ron Bruza was at the hearing, but Berwick’s George Curry — who has been at the center of the controversy — was not.
Curry denied any recruiting or wrongdoing after the District 2 hearing in June. The winningest coach in PIAA history, Curry previously announced that he will be resigning as the Bulldogs’ head coach after the 2015 season.
Like the District 2 board, the PIAA was also unanimous in its decision.
The state’s voting board was comprised of James Zack (District 4 Chairman), Douglas Bohannon (District 3 Vice Chairman), Robert Hartman Jr. (District 11 Chairman), Audrey Hall (Girls’ Athletic Representative) and Dennis Nemes (Private Schools’ Representative).
The Beckhorns are allowed to play any other sport at the school during the 2015-16 school year, and they could practice with the football team. But they cannot appear in football games or scrimmages.
With the football season just more than two weeks away and the Beckhorns out of options to appeal, the family still might seek further legal recourse, according to Hoffman. Hoffman said “we’re going to explore filing a lawsuit” against the PIAA, but he did not know if it would definitely happen or a timetable on such an action.
Berwick Superintendent Wayne Brookhart, who has been dealing with the situation since the school shut down its program for an internal investigation on the matter in May, said he is ready to put it in the rearview mirror.
“Am I ready to move forward? Yeah, absolutely,” said Brookhart, who was one of three Berwick administrators at the hearing. “If they file a suit, we’ll get everybody together again and say the same things we said the last two times.”