Pay for play accusations in High School...

Posted on: August 17, 2016 at 10:09:40 CT

tampa FL:


TAMPA — Jacqueline and David Hiatt's son, Mitchell, was just 12 years old, still years away from enrolling at Plant High School, when they got an email from a fellow Little League parent.

"If you want your kid to play Plant baseball," David Hiatt recalled, "this is what you've got to do."

Mitchell, now 21, eventually became the first of three Hiatt boys to spend time in the Plant High baseball program. But before they got there, just as the email advised, the Hiatts said they spent $1,100 a season, twice a year, to play for the Tampa Panthers — an under-14 AAU organization that uses a logo and colors similar to the high school and is managed and operated by current Plant baseball coach Dennis Braun.

If you didn't pay to play for the Tampa Panthers, parents and former Plant assistant coaches say, you'd likely never make the high school cut, creating an atmosphere that former pitching coach Scott Hurst, as well as former and current Plant parents, say is elitist and rigged to benefit the families who pay for offseason teams with which Braun is associated.

In his 11 years at Plant, Braun has been involved in three investigations, one by the school district in 2007 involving intimidation of a player and two by the FHSAA. The most recent one from the state came within the past year when it was discovered that all of Braun's varsity players participated on the same non-school summer team — except one player, who was later cut his senior year.

"There wasn't anything the FHSAA said needed to happen to Dennis Braun. There were some restrictions put on the program, absolutely," Hillsborough County athletic director Lanness Robinson said. "That issue was a year ago. There have been some people bringing it up, but that issue was put to rest."

That doesn't appear to be the case.

Hurst and a group of parents met with school board member Sally Harris to discuss their continued concerns with Braun and the baseball program in April, then later that month they did the same with Hillsborough County superintendent Jeff Eakins. After the 2016 season, Braun resigned, only to be reinstated by the school weeks later.

Braun, 49, says he has never mandated that his players participate on any specific AAU or summer team. Plant principal Robert Nelson, who declined to answer direct questions about the baseball program, said in a statement that he received an outpouring of support for Braun upon Braun's resignation.

"The coaching search began immediately and interviews were conducted for the position. During that search, most of the current players met with me regarding the positive impact Coach Braun has made on them and the program," Nelson said.

"A few weeks later, Coach Braun made a request to come back to his position as head coach of the baseball program. … I am confident in the direction of the program under Coach Braun's leadership into the future."

Hurst doesn't deny that Braun has had a positive impact on parts of Plant's baseball program, one that boasts three first- or second-round draft picks in the past seven years and four 20-win seasons during Braun's tenure at the school.

Still, he said, it's not the current Panthers, most of whom pay for years for their spots on the team, who have been harmed.

"The victims of this … are not the people on the team," said Hurst, who spent seven years working under Braun. "They're the kids from years and years who were cut because they didn't pay. It's not like you're going to be able to sit there and survey, because I don't remember most of the kids' names. Because they just never came back again."