The NCAA has placed New Hampshire’s men’s hockey team on two years’ probation as part of a punishment for major recruiting violations.
The national association reported that a New Hampshire associate head coach sent 923 impermissible e-mail messages to 30 prospective student-athletes during the 2007-08 season.
The associate head coach, who was not named in the NCAA’s report, said he misinterpreted how data needed to be entered into recruiting software that sends e-mail messages to multiple recipients.
That, according to the report, led to 30 recruits getting e-mails from UNH before June 15 after the end of their freshman or sophomore years in high school.
The New Hampshire Union Leader reported that the associate head coach was Scott Borek.
“It was an honest mistake,” New Hampshire coach Dick Umile told the newspaper. “Probation means we can’t make another mistake. We self-reported when we realized a mistake had been made with the scouting software. Hopefully this sort of thing will not happen again.”
An NCAA committee on infractions decided more punishment than UNH was willing to give itself was warranted.
The punishments given to New Hampshire are:
• Public reprimand and censure.
• Two years of probation beginning on the date the university accepted the committee’s additional recommended penalties (April 24, 2009, to April 23, 2011). That punishment was self-imposed by the school.
• A reduction by one in the number of recruiters who are allowed to be off campus at the same time through Oct. 23.
• The 30 recruits will not be allowed to receive an expense-paid visit to the campus, nor will they be allowed to sign a National Letter of Intent with UNH. Both punishments were self-imposed.
The members of the Committee on Infractions who reviewed the case for the NCAA were: Paul Dee, chair of the committee and lecturer of law and education at Miami (Fla.) and formerly the institution’s athletics director and general counsel; John S. Black, attorney; Melissa Conboy, deputy athletic director at Notre Dame; Eileen Jennings, general counsel at Central Michigan; Britton Banowsky, commissioner of Conference USA; Alfred J. Lechner Jr., attorney; and Dennis Thomas, the commissioner of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and formerly athletic director at Hampton.
