State denies appeal reinstating wins of a Cape high school football team

Oasis High School will finish the football season with three extra losses. Since the state did not allow a player for the high school to play, it will not give the team those wins back despite its pleas.

But the Cape Coral Charter Authority and Oasis High School appealed, which was denied. In a letter to the principal, the appeal said the staff “neither knew or could have known” of any violation. The school blames late reporting, calculating and posting of grades through the school district’s system.

Ricardo Fernandez, a Cape Coral parent, said that is what he tells his kids. “You wanna have extracurricular activities, you wanna be able to play sports,” he said, “you gotta make sure you do good in classrooms.”

Students can not slip below a 2.0 GPA. In the past, the principal’s letter states schools were given a list of ineligible students by the district. But that all stopped without notice. The ineligible player did not get caught until an assistant principal noticed the player’s GPA on a tardy list after the games.

Ron Theiss, a parent in Cape Coral, told us the rule should be enforced because kids need to learn to follow the rules; otherwise, these students will not be productive citizens in society. “If i was a parent of a child who didn’t get to play because this kid played,” he said, “I would feel very disappointed in the school for not following those rules.”