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SANTA ANA — Crean Lutheran football player Jacob Maiava received compassion from Orange County Superior Court judge David Hoffer on Friday but not the decision he was seeking in his legal fight to play this season.
Hoffer denied Maiava’s request for a temporary restraining order against CIF, which ruled the senior offensive lineman ineligible this season for following an assistant coach in transferring to Crean Lutheran from Santa Margarita.
“This is a big deal as I see it,” Hoffer told Maiava, who appeared in the hearing with his attorney Michael Caspino. “The court is sympathetic.”
Hoffer, however, sided with the CIF’s enforcement of its eligibility rules and handling of the transfer case.
The CIF-SS ruled that Maiava made an athletically motivated transfer in following former Santa Margarita assistant Ryan Porter to Crean Lutheran in the offseason. The ruling, made on August 27, was upheld by a CIF state appeal officer on Thursday.
Maiava, 18, has argued that he moved to Crean Lutheran for academic reasons.
He said Friday that the section’s initial ruling against his eligibility case “hit me hard” but he has grown in acceptance.
“It’s not the end of the world,” Maiava, who is committed to SMU, said of the decision. “I still have football ahead of him. When the right time is the right time.”
“I’m just going through God’s plan,” he added.
Caspino said he plans to seek a preliminary injunction hearing for the case. A conference was scheduled Tuesday.
“We are going to keep fighting,” Caspino said
Maiava’s first attempt for a restraining order against CIF was dismissed Sept. 23 because the result of the CIF appeal was still pending.
Crean Lutheran principal Daniel Moyer on Friday clarified his stance on Maiava’s appeal.
In an email to the CIF State office, he wrote, “Our school’s position not to appeal does not indicate a lack of support for a student-athlete independently pursuing an appeal; rather, it alludes to the value and regard we have for CIF and the rules established by CIF.”
