It was announced Thursday afternoon, by Rodrigo Torrejon of NorthJersey.com, that West Side track and field coach Eddie Greene had submitted his resignation to his school's Athletic Director Gary Taylor Thursday morning and was immediately accepted.
This resignation comes in the wake of a fake meet and results scandal that has gained the attention of many news outlets and the NJSIAA, the local high school sports governing body, who are already deep into their own investigation.
Greene is the co-founder the Newark Flames Track Club which is listed as the host for two meets caught up in this controversy. Greene admitted to falsifying results for the 2017 Brick City Invitational, which was actually held but with less participants than the submitted results included.
"It was a stupid decision on my part," Greene said to NorthJersey.com on Thursday. "I was just trying to make the meet seem a little bit bigger than the meet really was. It was a dumb move."
It seems the Brick City Invitational went from partially fake in 2017 to totally fake in 2018 when it was found that the entire meet, with results marked for May 20th, did not happen.
Club Coach Emails Admitting Brick City Invite Was Fake Meet
On Tuesday morning MileSplit received an email from an individual who identified himself as Corey Johnson, the coach and CEO of Newark Flames Track Club. Johnson wrote, "I am writing to say I apologize for the incident of the falsified meet that was supposedly held on May 20, 2018 at Newark School Stadium."
Johnson went on to say his intent was to put his athletes out there to attract college recruitment.
When asked about the 2018 meet by MileSplit on Tuesday Greene had denied any knowledge of the meet. He stated that MileSplit's previous email conversations about the results through Greene's email address had unknowingly been with Coach Corey Johnson who also had access to Greene's account.
On Thursday Greene stated to NorthJersey.com, "I showed Coach Johnson how it could be done. So I guess the next year when he wanted to use it for his purpose, he figured 'Well we did it last year. We could do it again.' He wouldn't have known how to do it if it wasn't for me."
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All results from these meets had been removed from their MileSplit meet pages the moment they came under scrutiny. The 2017 meet was never entered to the database, and for the 2018 meet the field events were initially approved before their take down after our own questioning of the recorded track results. MileSplit is currently investigating the validity of all other meets remotely associated with this meet management group.
Greene's resignation comes right before the NJSIAA Group State Championships scheduled to be held June 1st and 2nd. West Side had just won their first section title in 30 years the weekend prior at the North 2 Group 2 meet.