Yale men’s basketball captain Jack Montague ’16 “is withdrawn” from Yale College, a representative from the University Registrar’s office told the News on Tuesday.
On Feb. 17, Yale Director of Athletics Tom Beckett wrote in an email to the News that Montague was “not with the team at this time.” That same night, Montague told the News he was taking a personal leave.
The Registrar’s office would not specify the specific nature of Montague’s withdrawal, and University spokesman Tom Conroy wrote in an email to the News on Tuesday night that the University’s Office of Public Affairs had no information to provide about Montague.
Montague has been absent from Yale’s last four games, and the last contest he played in with the team was on Feb. 6 against Cornell. Given that just two weekends remain in Yale’s regular season, it appears likely the withdrawal will keep Montague out for the year.
The Yale College Programs of Study website cites four reasons that a student may withdraw from Yale College: “academic reasons,” “disciplinary reasons,” “medical reasons” and “personal reasons.”
Withdrawals for personal or academic reasons require students to be away from the University for at least one fall and one spring term, excluding the term in which the withdrawal took place, according to the YCPS website. A medical withdrawal instead requires that students stay away for one full term, excluding the term in which the withdrawal took place. The duration of a withdrawal for disciplinary reasons is decided by the Yale College Executive Committee, which hears violations of the Yale College Undergraduate Regulations. That decision is made when the student’s enrollment is suspended, the website states.
Montague did not respond to four requests for comment on Tuesday night, though he said in his statement to the News last week that he was “trying to come back as soon as possible.” Jasmina Besirevic-Regan, dean of Montague’s residential college, Trumbull, chose not to comment on Montague, as did men’s basketball head coach James Jones.
Montague, who started the first 20 games of the 2015–16 season and averaged 28.4 minutes in those contests, has not been mentioned in the sports publicity recaps for any of the past four games on the Yale athletics website. He was not listed as a probable starter for this past weekend’s games in the weekly media guide, though his name remained at the bottom of the list of bench players.
In the four games that Montague has missed over the past two weekends, Yale is 3–1, with the lone loss being a 75–63 defeat at Princeton that snapped a 12-game Yale winning streak and ended the team’s chance at a perfect conference season. The loss brought Princeton to within a half-game of Yale at the top of the Ivy League standings.
In the meantime, details about Montague’s absence have not circulated to alumni of the Yale men’s and women’s basketball programs. Former men’s basketball player Earl Graves ’84 and former women’s player Karen Yarasavage ’87, co-presidents of the Yale Basketball Association, as well as 2014–15 team captain Greg Kelley ’15, said they had no information on Montague’s current status. Graves and Yarasavage added that the topic has not come up among board members’ conversations.
Two other Yale head coaches interviewed also did not know of additional details regarding Montague. Women’s basketball head coach Allison Guth could not be reached for comment.
Yale next plays Harvard at home at 7 p.m. Friday.