For an older coach, all I’m trying to do is give them an athletic program no matter what the sport is, where we can keep our athletes where they are because we’ve got a terrific thing going.”īliss’ predecessor, Darrell Larsen, was hired by APA in June 2017 as athletic director. “The thing I really respect about APA is its academics and character development. “I don’t know what’s ahead of us,” Bliss said. In an interview with the Review-Journal earlier this year, Bliss said his high school program is clean. … We can’t compete with that at our level. You have kids coming in and out of nowhere. ![]() “I question the integrity with Bliss at the helm. “There is no way we want American Prep anywhere near our league with the stuff going on over there,” said Bill Darrow, athletic director at Needles High School and president of the Class 2A Southern League of high schools - the NIAA’s fourth-largest level by enrollment - prior to the meeting. APA was forced to forfeit two basketball games at the middle school level this season for using a high school player and another player without eligibility. He said there will be a time and place to discuss it.īut parents and administrators were doing plenty of talking in the months prior to Wednesday’s meeting, openly questioning whether Bliss plays by the rules. “Our players have goals of trying to be in college,” Bliss said last month, “and I think I can help them a little bit based on my experience.”īliss has avoided talking in depth about his time at Baylor. The NIAA oversees Nevada’s high school activities, and only member programs can compete for state championships. We’re going to be a school that talks about character and growth and second chances.” “That person in the documentary was 15 to 18 years ago,” APA secondary director Nik Hulet said in January of the decision to name Bliss athletic director and basketball coach last summer. He had served as basketball coach and athletic director at Calvary Chapel for one year. Bliss, now 75, ultimately received 10 years of NCAA probation in the wake of the Baylor scandal and hasn’t coached at the major-college level again.Īnd yet several months after administrators at APA viewed the film, the K-12 charter school in Clark County hired Bliss - making it the second school in Southern Nevada to hire him in the past 18 months. The film played recordings of Bliss fabricating a tale that Dennehy was a drug dealer as a way to conceal that Bliss secretly paid for the player’s tuition while coaching at Baylor because he was out of scholarships. The motion can only be brought back for consideration by an NIAA board member.īliss resigned his position as basketball coach at Southwestern Christian University in Oklahoma City in 2017 upon the release of “Disgraced,” which included his disparaging remarks made in 2003 about murdered Baylor University player Patrick Dennehy. Rollins Stallworth, Washoe County executive athletic director and NIAA board vice president, said the NIAA wanted to “get some more information and gather more data about the school.” That motion was tabled indefinitely because of concerns about the school and the basketball program led by Bliss, the controversial former major college coach and the subject of the Showtime documentary “Disgraced.” The Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association was scheduled to consider the American Preparatory Academy’s request for two-year probationary status as a way to be granted full membership. (Heidi Fang /Las Vegas Review-Journal) NIAA decided Wednesday that it wasn’t ready to welcome Dave Bliss. American Preparatory Academy basketball coach and athletic director Dave Bliss, right, shouts instructions to his team during a home game against SLAM Academy in Las Vegas, Thursday, Jan.
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