The Bellevue Wolverines football club could be ineligible to compete for a KingCo Title and in post-season games for the next four years, the KingCo conference ruled Tuesday as a penalty for the program’s many state and district rule violations.

Under sanctions recommended by KingCo on June 7, the team would be on probation through the 2019-2020 school year, and they will also be disallowed from playing non-league football games this coming school year or playing out-of-state opponents through 2019.

KingCo’s decision comes as an upset for the team, which has won 11 titles in the past 15 years.

However, the Bellevue School District is not taking the sanctions laying down and announced that they will be appealing. Officials questioned about the evidence that led to KingCo’s decision, the severity of sanctions in relations to past precedent and about the impact on current and future students.

“They cited a ‘preponderance of evidence’ — We’re asking, what is that evidence?” Superintendent Tim Mills said during Tuesday’s school board meeting.

Attendees at the June 7 school board meeting, including head coach Butch Goncharoff, also voiced concern for the impact on players and urged the district to fight the decision.

“You may not like me, you may not like the football club, I can live with that. But don’t punish these kids. Fight back,” Goncharoff said.

The conference’s athletic directors reportedly conducted their own investigation, in addition to the district and WIAA investigations that have been conducted over the last nine months.

In it, they confirmed that boosters paid the tuition of athletes at the Academic Institute, that coaches coordinated payments for athletes, that money provided to a player’s family was not reported and that athletes have been illegally recruited. The district also confirmed several other program violations, including that athletes used false addresses to gain eligibility and that financial payments were made to coaches without school board approval.

KingCo also ruled that the coaches “shall be suspended from all aspects of the Bellevue High School Football and their feeder programs” for the next two years.

Meanwhile, the district moved last month to fire Goncharoff and assistant coach Pat Jones. Both men have denied any wrongdoing, and Jones filed a civil lawsuit on June 3 asking for an injunction against what he says are the district’s false statements that he received any unauthorized stipends from outside sources in excess of $500.

Court documents detail a May 27 conversation between Jones’ lawyer and district Human Resources Director Jeffrey Thomas in which it is alleged that Thomas falsely reported that Jones told him he had received unauthorized funds.

“Dr. Thomas knowingly fabricated that plaintiff Jones has received any money from anyone in violation of the rule,” the lawsuit contends.

Goncharoff called the investigation into the football program a set-up at the June 7 school board meeting.

“Westinghouse and Blackstone, turning over every rock, didn’t find any evidence of illegal recruiting. The district didn’t find any evidence of illegal recruiting, and the conference magically finds evidence of illegal recruiting? This has been a set-up since day one,” he said.

The district is also considering its options for the booster club, which was linked to many of the rule violations conducted by the program.

The booster club continues to deny that they broke any rules and says that KingCo’s ruling only hurts the players, who were not involved in the violations.

“We are obviously disappointed by KingCo’s conclusions,” the organization said in a statement. “The evidence shows that the practices KingCo now is penalizing… were approved by Bellevue School District and are shared by many, many area schools.”

The Reporter reached out to Goncharoff’s attorney for comment but did not hear back by press time.

Officials began investigating the storied football team after a 2014 incident and subsequent complaints about the program and its officials. Though Goncharoff and another coach were given two-game suspensions and the football program was put on three-years probation, additional accusations surfaced over the following months.

By the start of the 2015 football season, the team was once again being investigated, this time for allegations that the program was illegally recruiting students, directing them to attend a private school called the Academic Institute and coordinating tuition payments and other financial benefits. The role of the Wolverines football booster club also came under inspection during this time.

Over the following six months, third party investigators Carl Blackstone and Bob Westinghouse probed the football program with what some called a racial bias. Attempts to protect students and limit the scope of the investigation by the district were rebuked by the investigators.

They reported finding evidence to support many of the claims and uncovered “significant and long-standing violations” including some that were identified, but went unreported last spring.

Upon reviewing the WIAA report, district officials substantiated some of the findings while reporting that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to back up others. Those findings were reported to KingCo on May 23.

Moving forward, the program will be unable to receive any donations from any outside public or private entity for a period of four years through 2019. Any transfer students must provide a purchase/sales agreement or rental contracts from a residence located within the Bellevue High School service area, and a utility bill from now on.

The district has estimated their appeal will be filed on Monday.