Or are they simply tainted teams whose winning scoreboards don’t tell the true score?
If the past is prelude, it may be the latter.
Earlier this month it was revealed that the Ohio High School Athletic Association is investigating Harvest Prep’s athletic program because of eligibility issues and unethical conduct.
An OHSAA representative said Friday that the investigation is ongoing. It’s focused on the boys and girls basketball programs and it may not be completed for a month.
Mark Youngkin, a spokesman for Harvest Prep, released a written statement two weeks ago that read: “To our knowledge, HPS remains in full compliance with the association’s rules and policies but is prepared and fully willing to cooperate with the OHSAA’s investigation.”
The OHSAA has said that vacating a title or titles can be the punishment for a program that uses ineligible student-athletes.
Meanwhile, the Harvest Prep boys team overwhelmed Houston in the Division IV semifinals Thursday and now plays Berlin Hiland for the state crown today.
Last week, the Harvest Prep girls clobbered Fort Loramie to win its second straight state title. Last year, Harvest Prep — with three Division I transfers — also beat Fort Loramie, that time in the state semifinals.
Along with high school teams, Parsley and his jumbo-sized Pentecostal institution just outside Columbus also have men’s and women’s college hoops teams that represent their Valor Christian College.
This year the Valor men’s team was prevented from playing in the United States Collegiate Athletic Association tournament, although it was the defending national champs of that Virginia-based sanctioning body.
“There were internal sanctioning matters that prevented them from playing,” Matthew Simms, the associate director of the USCAA, said Friday. “Other than that I have no comment on them.”
This is a problem that seems to keep popping up with teams that play for Parsley, who is something of a basketball fanatic himself. He played in high school and is a vocal regular at games, whooping and hollering at his team and the refs, while, in the past, accompanied at times by a beefy bodyguard.
Ten years ago, his college team — then known as World Harvest Bible College — was trouncing almost every junior college and small four-year school it played, so I went over to do a story on this supposedly wondrous new basketball power.
It turned out the school was using a bunch of ringers.
World Harvest was led by Alvin Mobley, a 6-foot-8 shot-blocking, tomahawk-dunking, long-range shooting star who one rival — Randy Lincicome, now a Wittenberg assistant, but back then the head coach at OSU-Newark — called “a giant among kids.”
And Mobley was just that.
Prior to coming to World Harvest as a so-called “college player,” he had played briefly at three other colleges in Florida and New York and then embarked on a long pro career that included stints with Quad Cities in the Continental Basketball Association, the Wisconsin Blast in the International Basketball Association and tours in pro leagues in Portugal, Holland, Austria and Mexico, where he said he averaged 39 points a game and was the league MVP.
And then there was starting point guard Tony Sullivan, who was listed as a freshman at World Harvest, even though he’d already graduated from Denison University, where he played basketball three seasons.
The 600-student school had several other college transfers, including guard Mills Hawkins, who had played at College of Charleston, and center David Mobley, who was from Jefferson College in Watertown, N.Y.
When the story broke in the Dayton Daily News, several of World Harvest’s rivals were upset, though not totally surprised.
“When I saw some of the guys they played against us I said to myself, ‘Oh no, looks like the church team might be doing a little cheating,’ ” Wilberforce assistant Michael Cheaney said.
World Harvest officials claimed they did no wrong. They said they weren’t ruled by the NCAA, NAIA or the National Christian College Athletic Association.
They said they were governed by the National Bible College Association, which, back then, included just a few schools and had installed World Harvest coach Lisa Bradley as its vice president.
Now the college has a new name and is governed by a new association, but it seems some of the same old problems may still be there.
Problems that may now extend down to the high school teams, as well.
When Harvest prep beat Fort Loramie last week for the state crown, Parsley stood at his seat in the Schottenstein Center and raised his arms heavenward in a V sign.
Whether that stood for victory — or violation — is yet to be determined.
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