Parents left with questions after NCAA rule change postpones football camp

SEATTLE — Parents from around the country said they were left in the dark after a football camp their children planned to attend in Tukwila was postponed.

Northwest Elite Football Camp, which was originally scheduled for June 2 at the Starfire Sports Complex, will now be held on June 16 at Central Washington University. The change was announced June 6.

Families from Hawaii, British Columbia and Idaho were among those commenting on the company’s Facebook page, wondering what to do with airline tickets they had purchased to attend the June 2 camp.

The director of the camp, Cole Morgan, said this all stemmed from a NCAA decision in April.

The NCAA made some rule changes regarding satellite football camps, like this one, requiring the camps to be hosted at a member institution.

“It’s been complete scramble mode,” said Morgan. Starfire is not an NCAA school, so his team attempted to find a new place.

Morgan said they had initially found a local NCAA school to host the camp on the original date, but that fell through two days later.

“We had to back out due to just lack of clarity from the NCAA to the member institutions. So it’s not our lack of clarity. It’s the lack of clarity based on the ruling to the member institutions,” he said.

By mid-May, the company had posted on Facebook that plans were changing. But parents told KIRO 7 they wanted to be contacted as soon as the new rules were announced in April.

“(There) should have been some sort of shout-out communication then. That would be a lot easier to accept than a week before the camp,” said Kim Cortez, who was planning to fly her son to Seattle this week from Hawaii.

She found out about the changes on Monday only after she went online to do a final check for what to bring.

She said if she had not done that, she would have been standing at Starfire on Friday not knowing what happened.

Cortez, whose airfare cost $1,500, has plans to bring her son and his classmate to the camp in the hope they can be seen by college coaches. Cortez paid $145 plus tax for her son’s registration.

“All those Pac-12 schools, over 100 coaching staff, I just felt like it’d be good, especially from a small town in Hilo, Hawaii. We don’t really get that much exposure,” said Benjamin Cortez, a high school junior. “Now we’re pretty much, like, going up to Washington and Seattle for, like, pretty much nothing.”

The family said they are unable to come to Seattle again for a later date.

“We apologize for the lack of communication. We haven’t known, in all honesty, how to communicate,” Morgan said.

He said the camp will refund families who cannot attend the new date, though he promised the new location will work better for most families anyway.

He also said that he has already helped some participants work with airlines to refund their tickets due to these extenuating circumstances.

Similar camps around the country are also facing late changes to plans due to the NCAA ruling.

Morgan said the new rules also require the host school to have majority ownership of the camp, which means Northwest Elite Football Camp is now turning over 51 percent of the company to the new collegiate host.

Cox Media Group