Basketball Player Faces Discipline

The athletic department is considering the punishment it will impose on Chris Poellnitz, a junior guard on the Bears basketball team who was caught with marijuana in his room the week before Spring Break.

Athletic Director Brad Teague said head basketball coach Corliss Williamson will be speaking with Poellnitz soon to determine the punishment. Teague said he expects Williamson to be strict and impose severe punishment to set an example and precedent for the basketball program. Williamson was named coach March 12, less than a week before the incident.

“I think [Williamson] plans to be a little more severe with this,” Teague said. “He is a disciplinarian and he wants to set a good tone coming into this program.”

Police searched Poellnitz's room March 18 after someone called police about the smell of burning marijuana on the first floor of New Hall. Officers traced the smell to Poellnitz's room and found two "roaches" in the room. Two men jumped out the bedroom window and ran away when the officers arrived. Paige Ann Houston, 19,  a UCA student, was in the bathroom flushing the toilet, police said. No arrests were made but police referred the incident to the university  Judicial Board. Police said Poellnitz admitted to smoking marijuana. You can read the police report here.

Teague said he believes Williamson will make the right decision for Poellnitz, the team and the entire program.

“Each individual case is different,” he said. “[Williamson]  certainly is a mentor and if he can salvage and turn a kid’s life around, he will do that first and foremost, but there are times when it can’t be done. He will have to make that determination.”

Teague said the athletic department’s policy on substance abuse is much stricter than the campus policy in terms of testing and consequences.

“With our policy, a first offense causes a student athlete to miss 15 percent of the game time for a season,” he said “Second offense is 35 percent and, if there is a third offense, then that athlete is kicked off the team. I believe our policy is much more stringent [than the campus policy]. I do not know at what point you can be kicked off campus, but when a student athlete has to miss games after only one offense, that is a pretty big deal for them.”

Teague said the athletic department does random drug tests three times a semester in all the sports.

Chris Poellnitz

“We actually test more than most schools do per year,” he said “It is a random selection from over 400 student athletes and we take eight percent of that number every test. By the end of the year, we get a pretty good representation of the entire student athlete population.”

Teague said Poellnitz will have to submit to drug tests every time the random selections are made.

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