Tim Monette is a high-school student in Northville, New York who is fighting Burkitt’s lymphoma, a rare cancer that spreads quickly.
His treatment meant staying off the basketball court and he also missed school but hired a tutor in an attempt to keep up with his studies.
After doctor clearance, Tim made a return to the court in December and his teammates also shaved their heads in support of their friend.
However, last week the 17-year-old feared he would be stopped from playing due to his school attendance record, missing so much time is often a cause for ineligibility.
“When he said he couldn’t play, my heart just dropped,” Shawna Monette, Tim’s mother, said to the Times Union. !His basketball and his sports are everything to him.”
It wasn’t long before the hashtag #LetTimPlay spread and even trended briefly on Twitter, as reported by WNYT.com.
This then led to a sit-in protest of 200 students in the school gym and soon after this school administrators announced that Tim could play again, according to The Huffington Post.
Students organised a sit-in in support of Tim
Superintendent Debra Lineker issued the following statement on the matter, !High School principal Mariah Kramer questioned Tim Monette’s eligibility to play basketball, given that the district policy requires a student be in attendance on the day of the game to be eligible to play.
“She responded fairly and properly by letting him play last night and telling his parents that she needed to investigate this further in the morning. Never did she say definitively that he could not play.
“After consulting me and the school’s attorney first thing this morning it was decided that the home tutoring he is receiving constitutes the requisite attendance and as long as he has a doctor’s clearance for each game, he may be eligible to play.
“It is unfortunate that misinformation circulated through social media before it could even be resolved properly.”
However, Tim then tweeted about the incident saying that he had been told he wouldn’t be allow to play.
Tim tweeted about the incident
