Catalin Nougier, a 19 year-old biology major from France, is a member of the University of Tampa’s swim team.
His goal is to earn a spot on the team’s record board, but he is currently not allowed in the water.
The NCAA has not cleared Nougier to compete.
All athletes have a deadline to submit a number of files and transcripts in order to secure official NCAA clearance.
Nougier admits he did not get his paperwork done in time and has not yet been able to compete.
As he recalled, “I spent the whole day at a meet cheering for the team, just thinking, ‘I should be in that race.’”
Nougier’s disappointment has been shared by at least one other UT swimmer.
Sophomore Felipe Manzo came to UT from Argentina last fall.
Eager to compete with the swim team, he submitted all of his paperwork on time.
However, he had to wait three months before he was finally approved by the NCAA to practice with the team and participate in meets.
“I got to school and couldn’t swim,” he said. “Someone told me it would take a while because international students have a lot of these troubles.”
Assistant Athletic Director for Compliance Cher Pittenger said that part of the problem is the timing of the forms’ submission.
“If an international student submits the paperwork one day before the deadline, there’s no way the student will be cleared in time to compete,” she said.
According to a representative of the NCAA’s International Academic Certification Center, “It only takes a day or two to clear an athlete once we have all the paperwork, it just takes time to get all the forms in.”
Jim Kiner, UT’s assistant swim coach, said that in reality though, the clearance does not seem to come so quickly or easily — especially for international students.
“In our experience with foreign athletes, it takes them a lot longer to [become] eligible, just because of the paperwork,” he said.
Cher Pittenger agreed that a day to complete all of the necessary work was not reasonable.
“Maybe two weeks, but not always even then. Just recently I had to call [the NCAA] and tell them that I knew they had a student’s paperwork and to hurry on approving him before he was declared ineligible for the rest of the season,” she said.
Pittenger said a student should expect to wait an hour on the phone before even being able to speak to someone.
Even with the special UT hotline number, Pittenger still has to wait for a considerable amount of time.
Both Kiner and Pittenger find the clearance process frustrating — for them as well as for students. They concede that it is necessary though.
“The NCAA is just covering themselves,” said Kiner.
Pittenger also said that the NCAA customer service is actually getting better. “Keep in mind, the NCAA have D1 and D2 [Divisions one and two] applications to look over,” she said. “That’s thousands of forms. They have a lot to do. The process needs to be this complicated for international students.
They have to be very sure of everything. All the paperwork has to be official and correct.”
And it also has to be on time — as Nougier and his team have found.
“We’d love to have Catalin eligible,” Nougier said, “but we’re at the mercy of the NCAA until they clear his transcripts.”
Richard Solomon can be reached at richard.solomon@spartans.ut.edu.