Lincoln Park High School basketball season unlikely to resume, mayor says
Lincoln Park High School’s boys basketball team is officially out of the Chicago Public League playoffs after forfeiting its first-round game Tuesday, and those hoping the team might get reinstated in time for the state playoffs are unlikely to get any relief from Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
The Lions forfeited their game against Perspectives-MSA days after the district suspended their season because of allegations that included misconduct during a team trip to Detroit near the end of December. CPS suspended the team’s head coach, Pat Gordon, in early January. After further investigation uncovered several more serious allegations, the district said it reassigned interim coach Donovan Robinson and fired interim principal John Thuet and assistant principal Michelle Brumfield.
Lightfoot, who was in Washington, D.C. Tuesday, told the Sun-Times she doesn’t “have any reason to believe that they’re going” to reinstate the team’s season. “There’s no coaches, so it’s hard for the team to go forward,” the mayor said.
Technically any Lincoln Park staff members with the proper coaching certifications could step in to coach the team if the suspension was lifted. But a CPS spokesman said Tuesday the decision to suspend the remainder of the season was based on serious allegations that went beyond concern about coaches.
“As we’ve said, there are allegations of student misconduct and adult misconduct,” CPS spokesman Michael Passman said. “The season would not be suspended if the district was only looking at adult misconduct.”
CPS has yet to get into specifics about the allegations that led to the suspensions and firings, only broadly describing the type of alleged misconduct. District officials are worried that going into deeper detail could subject any involved students to further trauma, a source said.
CPS officials said at a meeting with parents and students Monday night that there are multiple investigations into allegations of sexual misconduct, retaliation against witnesses, lying to families and financial mismanagement of the athletics program.
In addition to allegations against the boys team, the school is investigating the girls basketball team — the team’s coach was removed from the school for alleged improper contact with a player on the girls team — and a separate allegation of sexual misconduct at the school involving two students not related to the teams.
Lightfoot said “the information that was provided by CPS personnel at the town hall last night was pretty fulsome.”
“Based on the information I was provided, I have confidence that the CPS personnel took the right steps to make sure that we had a safe, healthy school environment for young people,” Lightfoot said.