While debate heats up over President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration, another immigration controversy simmers in Kane County court. It can generate intense passions too.
This one centers around the high school basketball season, set to tip off this week with Thanksgiving tournaments throughout the state, and Rodrigue Ceda Makindu’s desire to play for his school team, the Mooseheart Red Ramblers. They won the 2013-14 small school state championship, the first in Moosheart’s 101-year history.
Congo-born Makindu, an athletic 6-foot-3 senior at the residential school in Batavia, arrived there in October 2012 through the efforts of Plano High School Athletic Director Jim Schmidt. After sitting out a year in compliance with Illinois High School Association rules, Makindu was hoping to play in the 2013-14 season.
But the IHSA in July 2013 imposed tougher restrictions on international students’ eligibility, largely in response to Mooseheart’s successful fight to gain eligibility for three towering South Sudanese players who led the Red Ramblers to the championship. Two of the three have graduated. IHSA bylaws have made the third, who remains at Mooseheart, ineligible.
The new restrictions that snagged Makindu brought him to Judge David Akemann’s courtroom Friday for a three-hour hearing in which his attorneys asked the court to scrap IHSA’s new bylaw on international students. IHSA’s attorney and executive director were there to defend the measure. Akemann said he expects to make a decision before Thanksgiving.
The bylaw essentially limits athletic eligibility to one year for international students, but only if they arrived under the auspices of a program approved by the IHSA and the Council on Standards for International Educational Travel. By making his way to the U.S. through Schmidt, Makindu fell outside that requirement.
The IHSA says member schools proposed the bylaw change as a way to keep a level competitive balance among all schools. In addition, IHSA Executive Director Marty Hickman testified that members deliberated on the planned change for months, then overwhelmingly voted for it.
“This is not a case against Ceda,” IHSA attorney David Bressler said during the hearing. “Unfortunately, he fell in the entrails of it.”
Bressler said he admired Makindu’s courage to come alone to the U.S. and leave Congo, where a decadelong conflict has killed an estimated 5 million.
“But I also have to uphold the rules on behalf of the other 800 member schools,” Bressler said.
Makindu’s supporters contend the new bylaw is unconstitutional and discriminates against international students, particularly those at Mooseheart, a 1,000-acre institution run by Moose International for children from unstable environments. Makindu’s attorneys, Judd Lofchie and John Hayden, argued in court that the potential for residential schools such as Mooseheart to gain a competitive advantage is extremely remote.
“They’re not here to upset the competitive balance,” Hayden said of the international student-athletes. The bylaw is “a knee-jerk, xenophobic reaction to a perceived problem that doesn’t exist.”
Makindu testified for about 10 minutes. In a soft voice, he said he wanted “to come to America for study (and to) enjoy life like normal kids,” He also testified that he has a 3.5 grade point average on a 4-point scale.
Mooseheart had a very modest basketball profile before the arrival of four teenagers from war-ravaged South Sudan in 2011. Three of them — 6-foot-7 Mangisto Deng, 7-foot 1 Akim Nyang and 6-foot-9 Makur Puou — wanted to play basketball and sat out a year in compliance with IHSA rules.
The Big Three, as they came to be known, took to the court for Mooseheart in the 2012-13 season and endured an eligibility roller coaster centered around critics’ contention that they were brought to Mooseheart specifically to play basketball. Mooseheart administrators said they were willing to accept children from Sudan and South Sudan, regardless of their athletic prowess.
After graduating from Mooseheart, Deng and Puou are attending and playing basketball at Vincennes University, an Indiana institution with the No. 1 ranked team in the National Junior College Athletic Association. The other two students from South Sudan, Nyang and Wal Khat, are set to graduate from Mooseheart in May.
Mooseheart’s first game is Dec. 2 against Illinois Math & Science Academy.
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