Harvard Athlete Who Put Academics First, Loses Battle With NCAA
CAMBRIDGE (CBS) - A star player on the Harvard women's basketball team has been told she has to sit out the season, after she lost a battle with the NCAA.
"Terrible, it just feels unjust," says Temi Fagbenle. Born of Nigerian parents, she's one of twelve children raised in London. At age 15, she passed a British graduation exam, and went to boarding school in the United States.
At 6-foot-4, she immediately caught they eyes of coaches at elite basketball schools. "She was ranked in many polls as 9th, 10th, 11th best player in women's basketball," says her Harvard coach, Kathy Delaney-Smith. "She was getting offers from Duke and big time schools."
WBZ-TV's Christina Hager reports
Harvard was her dream, and she was younger than her peers, so Temi repeated her junior year to improve her grades. It worked. "I got into one of the best schools in the world," she says proudly. "It's an honor."
But there was a catch. NCAA officials said repeating her junior year was against its rules, and suspended her from playing in games for a year. "NCAA member schools created this rule to discourage prospective student-athletes from intentionally delaying university enrollment for athletic reasons rather than academic pursuits," the NCAA said in a statement.
Temi says she delayed enrollment for the opposite reason. "Academics come first," she says. "Basketball has a shelf-life. You need to look at the long run." Harvard appealed the suspension and was able to reduce it from two years to one.
Still, her coach says it's unfair. "The NCAA as our governing body should applaud a student, a 17-year-old kid from another country, making academic decisions," says Delaney-Smith. "I'm so disappointed they're not."
