I would advise most on this board to take a breath and let the facts and process play itself out rather than speculate who knew what and when. It’s a masturbatory exercise at this point where people are going to assume and blame when we don’t have a clear view of what happened.
In situations like these, it’s best to take a deep breath and play a game called “what I know to be true, what is more than likely to be true, and what I don’t know to be true.”
Here, there are a few things that we know to be true. Hugley is seen entering and exiting this car on multiple occasions, including the night before it was reported stolen. We also know that he wasn’t the first person to enter the car that night. We also know that on at least one occasion, he was seen in the car when it had a different license plate. We also know that the girl whose car it was had some sort of relationship with guys on the team, and she’d hung out with them on prior occasions. We know that Hugley doesn’t have a criminal record, either here or in Ohio.
What is more likely to be true than not is that Hugley knew he didn’t have permission to drive the car. At the latest, he more than likely knew this the next morning, when presumably the girl wakes up, attempts to go out to her car, and realized that the car was no longer there. Unless the girl just decided to walk home without telling the people she was just with about the whole thing, it’s likely that she called one of them and said, “****, my car’s gone!”
What we don’t know is when the other plate was put on the car, and who put the other plate on the car. We don’t know who cooked up this harebrained scheme in the first place. We don’t know when the other guys on the team, or the staff, found out about it, and we don’t know whether Hugley was honest with the staff from the jump or whether he tried to hide it. We don’t know the nature of the relationship between the guys on the team and the girl. We don’t know about the way that the night played out, and whether Hugley or the other kid were initially under the impression, whether real or mistaken, that they could joyride the thing for a few hours, go grab food with it, etc. Outside of the two occasions after July 19 that Hugley was seen in the car, we don’t know how many other times the car was spotted, or who was driving it. We don’t know a whole lot of parts about the timeline - we know Hugley drove the car away - when did he get back? Did he drive the car back? Did he walk back? We don’t know whether he drove the car beyond the night it was stolen, or whether he was just getting in and out of it.
Anyway, we’re gonna have to wait and see how this plays out. My initial guess is that this thing is getting pled down and Hugley will get ARD. I can’t see him playing for the rest of the year, but my initial thought would be that it’d be a shame if it costs him a spot in this program permanently. At the end of the day, this was a situation that was incredibly preventable, and somehow even stupider than it was preventable...but nobody got hurt, and as long as Hugley takes responsibility and does what he needs to do to ensure that he’s in a good place with the staff and his teammates, I don’t see a need to kick him off the team.
That was a long post. Happy Saturday!
