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Jonnie Wiltshire returns to practice Saturday as UND sifts through changes
Aug. 1GRAND FORKS UND's Jonnie Wiltshire returned to football practice Saturday morning for the first time during the Fighting Hawks' fourth day of fall camp.While Wiltshire and teammate Avery Scott await court dates for a possible preliminary injunction regarding a fifth year of eligibility, Fighting Hawks head coach Eric Schmidt is wrestling with the constant changing landscape of legal rulings.On Friday, U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney in Colorado granted a fifth year of NCAA eligibility to all athletes from the high school class of 2022 who exhausted their fourth season of eligibility in the 2025-26 season.The 2022 class was wedged between last year's sweeping NCAA decision to grant a fifth season of eligibility based on the Diego Pavia court case and the future 5-for-5 rule that provides five seasons of eligibility across the board.Wiltshire's return to practice wasn't a result of the Colorado decision. Instead, his ability to practice was tied to his enrollment in graduate school at UND.Scott, meanwhile, is waiting for his enrollment status to finalize.Both Wiltshire and Scott have received temporary restraining orders from the court system, which allows the two to practice prior to court hearings on a possible preliminary injunction."We're still waiting to get Avery in class to practice," Schmidt said. "We have set up an injunction meeting in August, and now with the class-action suit, we're kind of learning as we go here what that means for them too, as well. I think that happens on a Friday afternoon and now you can't get some questions until Monday morning."Schmidt also indicated two other players from UND's 2025 roster would fall into the class-action lawsuit category and have expressed interest in a return."We're just working through what it means, and I think Monday we sit down and talk and find out," Schmidt said. "I think everybody in the country that was talking this morning ... other head coaches in our league ... everyone is trying to figure out the same stuff. Everybody just wants to make sure that if they use these players and something would change later on in the season, that you wouldn't have to forfeit games because you use the players. You want to protect everybody else on the roster. That's a delicate deal we're trying to figure out yet here as we move forward."
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