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Bob Collins

NCAA relents; allows student athlete to keep donations after being disowned

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Every now and then, the NCAA shows a little common sense in its insistence that college student-athletes not be tainted by money.

Emily Scheck, is a cross-country runner at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY. She's also gay.

That's why her family disowned her, according to OutSports.

Her mother had found a picture of Scheck and the girl she was dating, and she was horrified by it. Her mother told her that she was disgusting, and that she had to make a choice: come home and get therapy for her same-sex attraction, or be cut out of their lives forever. Scheck let her mother rant, not knowing what to do.

“I really didn’t know how someone should respond to that,” Scheck told Outsports. Yet she knew she didn’t want to have anything to do with some kind of conversion therapy, and she wanted to stay at Canisius preparing with her cross-country team for the season ahead.

Not long after that she came home to a shocker: her car’s license plates had been removed, and her car was full of her childhood belongings from home — awards, plaques, stuffed animals. She had bought her own car, but because her parents were paying for the insurance they had rescinded the payments, her father had driven to Buffalo from their home near Rochester, N.Y., and taken the license plates. He had also removed all of her belongings from their home and stuffed them in her car.

With that came a message that she was never to speak to them or her siblings again.

There aren't a lot of college kids who can survive for long without support from back home. Emily had $20 to her name.

So her roommate created a GoFundMe page to raise money.

It raised almost $26,000 after a $5,000 initial goal.

That's when the NCAA stepped in to be the NCAA. Athletes can't accept money.

After apparent pressure, however, it was announced on Friday that the NCAA will now allow her to keep the money for books and meals, showing a heart that's missing from the student athletes own family.