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Hendericks v. Clemson University3/20/2000
Appeal From Pickens County Thomas J. Ervin, Circuit Court Judge
Heard October 7, 1999
AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED IN PART, AND REMANDED
R. J. Hendricks, II sued Clemson University for negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, and breach of contract alleging improper academic advisement by Clemson's athletic/academic advisor rendered him ineligible to play baseball under National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) regulations. The trial court granted Clemson summary judgment on all causes of action. Hendricks appeals. We affirm in part, reverse in part and remand.
FACTS
Hendricks attended St. Leo College in Florida on a baseball scholarship for the first three years of his college education. St. Leo is a small college with a NCAA Division II baseball program. Hendricks's scholarship at St. Leo covered seventy-five percent of his costs for tuition, room, and board. While at St. Leo, Hendricks majored in business administration with a specialization in hotel/restaurant management.
After playing baseball at St. Leo for three years, Hendricks decided to transfer to a larger school. He contacted Clemson assistant coach Tim Corbin. Corbin was a former assistant coach with Presbyterian College and, as such, had recruited Hendricks out of high school. Clemson requested permission from St. Leo to contact Hendricks for transfer and a one-time transfer exception. St. Leo granted the requests. St. Leo indicated that Hendricks would fulfill the satisfactory progress requirement for continued participation in baseball at St. Leo.
Upon transfer to Clemson, Hendricks received a $250 "book scholarship." Hendricks paid his own tuition, room, board, and other expenses.
Over the summer, Hendricks communicated with Barbara Kennedy-Dixon, an academic advisor in Clemson's Student-Athlete Enrichment Program, about enrolling in classes. It is undisputed Hendricks never intended to graduate from Clemson, but planned to return to St. Leo and graduate in December of 1996. Hendricks hoped to use some of the hours he earned at Clemson toward his degree from St. Leo. Hendricks believed Kennedy-Dixon was advising him to take classes that would ensure his NCAA baseball eligibility and also would be transferable to St. Leo.
Because Clemson did not offer Hendricks's major, Kennedy-Dixon advised Hendricks to declare himself a speech and communications major with a cluster minor in administration. Kennedy-Dixon originally registered Hendricks in fifteen credit hours for the fall semester. A week and a half into the fall semester, Kennedy-Dixon realized she had not evaluated whether Hendricks was in compliance with the NCAA's fifty percent rule, which requires a student athlete to complete at least fifty percent of the course requirements for his degree to be eligible to compete during his fourth year of collegiate enrollment. She then advised him to drop one class and add two speech classes, increasing his course credits from fifteen to eighteen hours. According to Kennedy-Dixon, she asked her graduate student to consult with one of her colleagues about the situation, but she did not recall any feedback from the consultation.
Hendricks passed all eighteen hours. However, shortly before the spring semester began, Kennedy-Dixon realized she had miscalculated the classes he needed to be eligible to play baseball. A student pursuing a speech and communications studies major with a cluster minor in administration may have thirty-two elective hours, with eleven hours from lower level foreign language classes, which are prerequisites for the required upper level foreign language class. Hendricks had taken no foreign languag
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