Judge extends TRO for Harding player

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

A hearing lasting until after the Trumbull County Courthouse closed Friday didn’t determine the final outcome of Arthur Cook’s request to play basketball for Warren Harding High School, but it gave Cook two more weeks to do so.

Before testimony concluded, Judge W. Wyatt McKay of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court announced he would extend an earlier ruling for two more weeks.

The decision allowed Cook, who transferred to Harding before the current school year from Euclid, to play Friday night and through Jan. 27.

Several witnesses for Cook’s family and two witnesses for the Ohio High School Athletic Association testified during the hearing, which was held to provide evidence on whether the OHSAA properly ruled Cook ineligible to play.

The OHSAA said it believed Cook and his father, Gene Cook Jr., moved to Warren just before the current school year for basketball reasons instead of the family reasons the Cook family gave in a sworn statement.

The Cook family’s lawsuit says Gene Cook moved with his son to Warren to be closer to relatives and provide more positive influences in Arthur’s life following the separation of Gene Cook and his wife, Seanine.

After a Dec. 28 hearing, Judge McKay granted a temporary-restraining order that allowed Arthur Cook to play sports at Harding until Friday’s hearing.

Sarah Baker, an attorney for Cook, questioned Dr. Deborah Moore, associate commissioner of eligibility for the OHSAA, about the type of proof the OHSAA relied on to decide that Arthur Cook was trying to circumvent the rules when he moved to Warren.

Moore testified that school principals are responsible, in large part, for enforcing the OHSAA rules, and the OHSAA relies a great deal on what they tell the OHSAA.

In the case of Arthur Cook, the OHSAA received information from the principal at the school Arthur attended last year that Arthur had written messages on his Twitter account indicating he was “taking his talents” to Cleveland Heights High School for this year.

Moore conceded she had not yet seen certified copies of the tweets at the time the OHSAA decided to deny Arthur Cook an exemption to play at Harding. She said she relied mostly on what the principal at Euclid told her.

Tweets from Arthur Cook’s Twitter account submitted to the court with the lawsuit quoted him saying June 21: “Pops not feeling the Euclid squad he want me to enroll at Heights ...”

On June 24, a tweet says: “My dad just called me downstairs to tell me I’m going to either Shaker or Garfield!”

Seanine Cook said her son had sent 3,600 Tweets between June and December 2011, and to base a decision on just a couple would be wrong.

“The tweets are ambiguous if you don’t see them in context,” she said, adding that she thought some of the tweets were part of a running joke between Arthur and a friend.