Basketball hotshot Allonzo Trier approved to play at NOAH
BY Staff Reports
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
Home school basketball standout Allonzo Trier apparently will be eligible to play at NOAH (Northeast Oklahoma Association of Homeschools) after all.
Marcie Trier will move from Oklahoma City to Tulsa, making her 6-foot-2 son, rated among the nation’s top sophomores, eligible with the Jaguars in the 2012-13 season, according to hslive365.com, a website dedicated to reporting on issues relating to home school athletics.
The website quoted Tim Flatt, executive director of the National Christian Homeschool Basketball Championships, as its source on the move. The same group last week denied Trier’s petition for a hardship waiver to transfer from the OKC Storm, where he has played the past two years.
“This has really been a good process for the NCHBC,” Flatt told hslive365.com. “We are happy that NOAH made a proper appeal, the Eligibility Advisory Board made a ruling based on the guidelines, NOAH accepted the EAB ruling and Marcie Trier was able to make a huge sacrifice and move to Tulsa to meet the NCHBC guidelines.”
The move apparently would make NOAH an immediate player on the national home school stage. Trier, who holds scholarship offers from all four in-state Division I universities, averaged 22.7 points per game last season while leading the Storm to a 33-13 record and runner-up finish in the national home school tournament.
Trier moved to Tulsa this summer to follow his coaching mentor, former ORU basketball standout guard Jonathan Bluitt, and played for the Athletes First AAU team while living with the family of NOAH girls basketball coach Curtis Branch, whose 11th-grade son and Trier are good friends.
NCHBC guidelines state that an athlete must “live at home with his/rher parent, legal guardian or legally responsible person (in the case of children or other family hardships) in order to be considered homeschooled.”
NOAH was first approved in a petition designating Branch as Trier's legally responsible person, according to Chris Moody, NOAH director of basketball operations. But the Jaguars were later denied in their hardship eligiblity request by a 23-4 vote of the NCHBC's eligiblity board.
Moody told the Tulsa World last week he thought the process had been "fair."
