SEATTLE — A school district in western Washington is considering a two-year ban for its celebrated football coach after a report pointed to possible misconduct.
The Seattle Times reports that the Bellevue School District booster club recently said it paid Bellevue High head football coach Butch Goncharoff $60,000 per year. State rules require such payments to be approved by the school board, but a recent report from the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association says that never happened at Bellevue.
The booster club argues that the payments are acceptable because they were for non-coaching activities.
The school board said Tuesday that any coach found to have accepted money in violation of board policies should be ineligible to renew their contract for two years.
Goncharaoff told KING-TV that the investigation doesn’t make any sense.
According to the report in The Seattle Times (read full report here) the KingCo Conference put the clamps on the Bellevue High School football program Tuesday, banning it from postseason play for four years, prohibiting outside donations for four years and increasing oversight of incoming transfers for two years.
The newspaper published a 68-page report last year detailing the case (which can be read here) but it took nearly a year to conclude the outside investigation.
The punishments extended beyond the financial ramifications.
• Bellevue is not allowed to play any nonleague football games and will be limited to Class 3A league games for two seasons.
• Bellevue is not allowed to play out-of-state opponents for four seasons.
• The Bellevue athletic department is on probation for four years.
• KingCo will vacate Bellevue’s conference titles if the WIAA determines that state championships should be forfeited.
• KingCo will have stricter guidelines and oversight for incoming transfer student-athletes for two years.
The Bellevue football program was placed on a three-year probation last year for two self-reported violations, which allowed KingCo to hand down more severe sanctions.
“This begins the discussion of the penalty phase of the violations, and there are several steps working through that process,” said Mike Colbrese, WIAA executive director.
The Bellevue booster club in a statement early Tuesday expressed disappointment with the sanctions.
“The evidence shows that the practices KingCo now is penalizing — including summer sports camps for kids and paying coaches for extra work outside of the season — were approved by Bellevue School District and are shared by many, many area schools,” the statement said. “These efforts were and are fully within the rules.”
The boosters vowed to continue to fight. “The conference’s action sets a precedent that should raise a red flag to everyone,” the statement said. “We will continue to defend our right, and the right of booster clubs around the state, to make these activities available to kids.”
Bellevue has been a fixture in the HSFB100 rankings, being nationally placed in six of the last eight years — and a Top 25 member of the Dynasty Rankings on NationalHSFootball.com.
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