Usually when a high school football player is ruled academically ineligible, it’s because struggles in the classroom have left them underqualified to compete with their teammates. One Michigan rising senior is facing a very different problem: The Michigan State High School Athletic Association has ruled that he’s overqualified to compete as a high school senior.
As reported by the Chicago Tribune, among other sources, Abdur-Rahmaan Yaseen’s issue stems from the time he spent being homeschooled, when he successfully earned a number of high school credits while still in middle school.
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That set the stage, Yaseen, who has been vocal about making Michigan and Michigan State rue the decision not to recruit him, technically entered Walled Lake (Mich.) Western High School as a sophomore, despite aligning with the freshman class. That meant that he played his first season at Walled Lake Western as a sophomore, his second as a junior and his third as a senior. Now, as he prepares to begin what he believed was his senior season, he’s being told he already played his senior season, even though he has yet to graduate.
For his part, Walled Lake Western football coach Alex Grignon insists the school never received any notification that Yaseen might be ineligible until being notified of the ruling.
The silver lining of the entire incident? It reinforced Northwestern’s commitment to the three-star wide receiver.
“I talked to Northwestern and they said, ‘Hey, we’ve got his back, 100 percent,'” Grignon told the Detroit News. “It’s just unfortunate he doesn’t get to play this fall, doesn’t get to experience his senior year.”
That could change if the current appeal launched by Walled Lake Western and Yaseen is accepted. One appeal has already been lodged and rejected, but the school isn’t giving up yet. Neither is Yaseen himself, who continues to hope that there’s a solution that will allow him to play his senior season of football, as planned.
