Suspended Football Coach Reinstated in Howard County

ELLICOTT CITY, Md. (AP) - A coach and athletic director in Howard County has been reinstated, more than six months after being suspended without pay following a grade-tampering scandal.

Howard County school board members say they found it was inappropriate for Kenneth Hovet to take the full blame for failures that occurred at multiple levels of the school and at the central office.

Hovet was football coach and athletic director at Oakland Mills High School when an ineligible player had his grades changed in order to participate. He was suspended with a recommendation that he be fired.

Board members said yesterday that that decision by former superintendent John O'Rourke was hasty and unfair.

Hovet will receive back pay dating back to January, but he won't return to Oakland Mills High. The board expects to have a new assignment for him this week.

The grade-changing surfaced in November, when Principal Marshall Peterson announced that a football player's grades had been improperly changed to meet the minimum 2.0 grade-point average requirement. The team was forced to forfeit its seven wins and its playoff spot.

But the player wasn't the only student ineligible to play.

The athletes who did not meet the grade-point average included two varsity football players, four junior varsity football players, one junior varsity field hockey player, one junior varsity volleyball player, two members of the boys' cross country track team, two junior varsity cheerleaders and four varsity cheerleaders.

(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)