NORTH COLLEGE HILL — Several North College Hill High School football players who transferred from other schools are back on the field this season after Hamilton County judges granted temporary injunctions against the Ohio High School Athletic Association.
Under OHSAA transfer rules, varsity football transfers normally can play only the first five games at a new school unless they qualify for an exception. Senior Josiah Pouncy was cleared to keep playing Oct. 2, and several players in a second lawsuit were granted injunctions Oct. 8 and were permitted to play against Clark Montessori on Oct. 9. A hearing to extend that order is set for Oct. 22.
Many of the players followed head coach Tyler Williams from Cincinnati’s Taft High School after he took the North College Hill job early this year, and the OHSAA applied its recruiting-presumption bylaw to seven of them. Pouncy’s lawsuit says his family made a genuine move to North College Hill in January and raised safety concerns at Taft, and that the association denied his exception on causation grounds without finding the move was not genuine.
North College Hill is 7-0 and has allowed only three points all season heading into its Oct. 16 game against Cincinnati Country Day. The school says it is a neutral party in the lawsuits and will follow whatever the courts and the OHSAA decide.
