(Tribune file photo) The sunsets over Cottonwood's football field in this photo from 2008.
Prep football ? School board?s new rules spur Cottonwood benefactor to cut off his support, hobbling the program.
Before the Philadelphia Eagles drafted him, Stanley Havili was a Salt Lake City kid with shaky prospects.
His first semester at East High, Havili earned only a 0.7 grade point average. Some of his friends joined gangs and went to jail. Others wound up dead.
But Havili realized his potential as a standout athlete at Cottonwood High, a school with a football program amped up by millions of dollars donated by benefactor Scott Cate. Havili went on to earn a scholarship to the University of Southern California before joining the NFL in 2011, an achievement he credits to Cate.
"I?m pretty sure I?d probably be working at the airport throwing bags on a plane if it wasn?t for him," said the 6-foot, 245-pound Havili, his voice breaking with emotion during a Granite District School Board meeting in July. "But now I have the opportunity to provide for my family doing something I love."
For more than a decade, hundreds of teenagers such as Havili benefited from Cate?s passion for football and his deep pockets before all that slammed to a sudden stop this summer amid questions about football-program finances at Cottonwood in Murray and other Utah high schools.
What started late last year as a probe into Timpview High School?s team grew into a statewide investigation. The review lifted the veil on sloppy financial practices within a number of Utah programs including Cottonwood?s, where Cate was allowed to donate more than $3 million with little documentation.
In an attempt to clean up Cottonwood?s finances, the Granite board passed a new donations policy that, among others things, prohibits big-time donors such as Cate from coaching. Insulted, Cate withdrew his support for the program.
"This is ridiculous. He helped the community," Havili?s father, Tevita Havili, told The Salt Lake Tribune. "If it weren?t for Scott, my kids wouldn?t have gotten this far."
But district leaders maintain the policy was long overdue and accept responsibility for years of financial haphazardness.
"This isn?t a recent problem," said district spokesman Ben Horsley. "It?s in relation to following our own policies ensuring state law is adhered to. ... These problems didn?t begin with some of the people we have in place now but they?re going to end with us."
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Poor documentation ? District documents show a number of issues during the past decade concerning the handling of donations. But the records ? obtained by The Tribune through an open records request ? are perhaps more notable for what they don?t show.
In October, Granite sent Cate and his wife a letter thanking them for their donations over the past 13 years. That letter listed $3.25 million worth of donations ? everything from football uniforms to a press box to a new football field. Cate, a former University of Utah quarterback, became wealthy building and selling an international telecommunications company. The last of his children graduated from Cottonwood about three years ago.
But that letter, in most cases, is where the district?s documentation of those donations ends.
The district doesn?t have records of everything Cate donated. Granite also was unable to fulfill a records request from The Tribune for emails between district personnel and Cate during the past decade.
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