Ex-Bay Area athlete languishes in limbo over eligibility battle with NCAA

A parent and longtime collegiate administrator threatened the NCAA with a lawsuit over the “mental stress” the institution and its decisions have put on his son, a former basketball player at American Canyon High School who was ruled ineligible to play this fall as a graduate transfer at the University of Southern Mississippi.

“I just think if this went to court, lay people would be like, ‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,'” said John Wade II, the athletic director at Contra Costa College and the father of John Wade III, a late-blooming guard seeking a positive finish to a turbulent college experience.

When he graduated in the spring of 2018, Wade III didn’t have big hoop dreams. Despite three years on the varsity basketball team, he stood 5-foot-10, held a 3.97 GPA and planned to pursue mechanical engineering at UC Davis.

Six-and-a-half years later, after a growth spurt and a change of heart, Wade III is 6-foot-4, 24 years old and languishing 2,000 miles away, unable to do anything but go to class, practice and watch as the Golden Eagles have accumulated a 4-5 record to start the season.

“I switched my route in school to pursue basketball. I was a full-time student, doing academically well, who chose to chase a dream, and I feel like they’re penalizing me for that,” he said. “It has taken a toll on my mental health. I’ve been losing faith, but everybody’s been positive, so I really appreciate them.”

According to Wade’s father, who coached at the University of San Francisco and has spent the past two decades in charge of athletics at Contra Costa College, the governing body is doing a disservice to a student-athlete who didn’t initially pursue basketball at the collegiate level.

“I’m disappointed with the NCAA,” Wade II said. “I really thought they had evolved to the point where, this is supposed to be for students, right? It’s supposed to be the protector of student-athletes in universities.”

The family is currently awaiting a court date for a hearing where they hope a judge will issue an injunction that would allow Wade III to play immediately.

Under NCAA rules, the typical athlete is eligible to compete for four years in a five-year window. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many student-athletes, including Wade III, received an extension for an additional year of eligibility.

After his freshman year at UC Davis, where he focused solely on his studies, he transferred to Contra Costa College and joined the basketball team, where he lost one season to the pandemic but played well enough to earn the attention of a Division I program, Cal State Northridge, which recruited him for the 2022-23 season.

The opportunity went sideways and resulted in Wade III receiving a hardship waiver for an additional year of eligibility. According to a letter sent by Wade II to the NCAA appeals committee, his coach, Trent Johnson, who was fired after the season, inflicted “mental and physical abuse” that resulted in his “mental and physical well-being rapidly declin(ing).”

While Johnson, Stanford’s coach from 2004-08, and his staff were fired, “the new administration and coaching staff did not honor the previous assurances, leaving him with no choice but to transfer.”

Wade III appeared in 10 games for the Matadors, averaging 1.5 points, 2.3 rebounds and 12.0 minutes per game, in what is still his only Division I experience to date.

He transferred to Cal State Stanislaus, where he received his undergraduate degree in mathematics last spring while being named an All-CCAA honorable mention on the court. While it was only his third full season of competition — along with 2019-20 and 2021-22 at Contra Costa — the NCAA claimed that it exhausted his eligibility because of his time at UC Davis.

Wade III was not recruited and, according to the NCAA documents, did not approach the staff about walking on to the program.

In spite of that, the NCAA ruled that it counted as a fourth year of eligibility “given (Wade III) enrolled at (UC Davis) which sponsors men’s basketball; however (Wade III) was not a member of (UC Davis)’s men’s basketball team which is considered a circumstance within (his) control.”

The ruling came as a surprise to Southern Miss, which recruited Wade III under the impression it was adding an eligible graduate transfer.

It also confounds Wade III, who doesn’t understand why his eligibility clock would start in a year when he didn’t participate in collegiate athletics.

“My son is not trying to do anything that’s not above board; he’s just trying to play his four years,” Wade II said. “At the end of the day, he went to Davis and he didn’t play. That’s the thing that blows me away, that he didn’t play. But they’re saying his clock started even though he didn’t play.”