The National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) has rescinded sanctions imposed on North Idaho College regarding eligibility of an international men’s basketball player.

Last month, Guy-Marc Michel, who played for NIC during the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 seasons, was determined to be ineligible by the NJCAA because of his participation with an upper level French professional team and because his eligibility expired while taking college preparatory classes after graduating from high school and prior to attending NIC.

The NJCAA initially imposed a sanction barring NIC’s current men’s basketball team from participating in regional, district and national postseason play. That sanction was lifted in January after an appeal by NIC. However, the sanction requiring NIC to forfeit all wins from the seasons that Michel played was imposed.

NIC’s initial appeal prompted further review by the NJCAA and led to its decision to lift all sanctions against NIC, according to a letter from the NJCAA Executive Committee received by NIC Thursday.

“The NJCAA is a professional and highly regarded organization and I’m pleased that they were able to review the international student eligibility situation in more detail to overturn their original punitive decision,” said NIC Athletics Director Al Williams. “More discussion will take place at our upcoming NJCAA annual meetings in March. Hopefully we can establish reasonable guidelines to allow international student athletes to compete and still maintain the integrity and balance of college athletics and amateur status. Fortunately, this recent ruling also allows our current international student-athletes to complete without further scrutiny.”