Scholarbook suspended by Athletics Kenya

Bump. This is kinda big news.

Will the NCAA honor Kenya's suspension of scholarbook though? For all intents and purposes, an athlete could be sanctioned by Kenya but competing in the US for 4+ years - they could even attend college in the US long enough to gain US citizenship (with graduate study), rendering the sanction meaningless. And due to lax testing in the NCAA, they could dope the entire time.

I don't really understand why? Athletes are all doping in Kenya with or without scholarbook. I don't think they have anything to do with it

AK is not known to be all that proactive about anti-doping, so if they're going after Scholarbook this hard then Scholarbook must be showing some very real failings in following anti-doping regulations.

We've already seen multiple Kenyan athletes from Scholarbook (or similar firms) in the NCAA get popped for doping - one of them actually got popped BEFORE coming over. This casts a serious shadow on anyone coming through this program.

I have no doubt that there will be more than a few athletes that are willing to roll the dice and take a gamble on losing Kenyan national eligibility in favor of coming stateside for the NCAA. The talent pool might take a hit, but this probably won't stop Scholarbook from doing what they've always done

I wonder if it's about money. Athletics Kenya might not like having a foreign company profiting off its athletes. Total speculation: is it possible that AK and Scholarbook had a dispute over how much of a cut AK should get from Scholarbook's recruiting service revenue?

Or maybe AK just decided they want to be the gatekeepers for such financial opportunities. It will be telling if AK announces they are running their own official recruiting service, and they ask American universities to only go through them to have access to Kenyan talent.

That's certainly a possibility as well. AK has a long history of corruption and I'm sure they don't like Scholarbook making out like bandits on their home turf. A lot of ill-gotten gains to be had and many fingers in the pie.

Or the possibility that Scholarbook has always been a dirty organization! Cutting corners and playing in the Grey matter for the almighty dollar from college programs that particularly dont have the money to keep using this so called "service"

I hate to admit that. But when I see articles like this, I do wonder:

1. Did they not give them enough of a kickback?
2. Is this a way to blame the foreigners for our doping problem?

Maybe that's not fair. Maybe they just want more correspondence. It seems like these entities need great communication. It could be WADA is upset people are coming to the US while under bans.

I added this link to the first post:

citizen.digital

AK bar athletes from participating in Scholarbook International trials

The federation warned athletes and Athlete Support Personnel against participating in a “Golden Ticket Training” time trial event scheduled for March 12, 2026, at Afraha Stadium in Nakuru.

Open link

STATEMENT FROM SCHOLARBOOK INTERNATIONAL REGARDING ATHLETICS KENYA PUBLIC NOTICE – March 4, 2026

We have taken note of today's public notice issued by Athletics Kenya and wish to set the record straight.

Scholarbook has complied with every applicable regulation. We are fully registered with the Kenya Sports Registrar, hold a signed compliance agreement with ADAK, have partnered with ADAK to provide educational anti-doping workshops for our athletes before traveling to the USA and have been in direct communication with the AIU to ensure full compliance with anti-doping regulations. Furthermore, we are working with the AIU to provide regular doping testing and anti-doping education at our events — a step we took voluntarily to uphold the highest standards of integrity. The characterization of our activities as non-compliant is factually incorrect.

We are also deeply concerned about the motivations behind this notice. It is our belief that certain individuals within Athletics Kenya's leadership have undisclosed ties to organizations that compete directly with Scholarbook, which creates a serious conflict of interest. We call on AK to be transparent about any such conflicts of interest.

Our event exists for one reason: to give athletes a fair, clean, and professional platform to showcase their talent. We remain committed to that mission and to constructive dialogue with all stakeholders in Kenyan athletics.

Philipp Baar
Head of Track and Field
Scholarbook GmbH

I used to coach pre scholarbook Kenya (they were only doing Europe at the time) but recruiting Kenyans and getting visas was hard.

One success story we had is the kid wanted to be an accountant, Kenya would not approve the visit. Their reasoning was “he won’t come back, he will be an accountant in the US”. They were tired of losing their best and brightest to brain drain. We switched his intended major to Forensics/ Criminal justice, they approved that so fast with the thinking of the athlete returning home and working for the government.

I think this is more about losing all of their best athletes and college eligible student to the US. We all know that a good percentage won’t return to Kenya for a career.

And a bribe probably helps

Hilarious. Scholarbook and Companies like them are an affront to the sport. Their very existence is offensive. This idea that they are merely a platform is disingenuous at best. Notice that Scholarbook, a German based company, isn't shipping all these athletes to Berlin. Crying "foul" about behind the scenes shenanigans is laughable as they operate as modern day human traders.

Now this makes sense.

I was thinking about this this some more this morning and wondered, "There must be so many Kenyans upset. Little did they know, if someone had gotten organized, they could have been raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars in business helping Kenyans run in the US for college. Instead most of the money is going to Westerners who figured it."

And now it appears they want their cut. And in these third world countries, you kind of expected to pay up one way or the other.

He knows hes invested all his capital into this. If this goes down. Scholarbook is done!

lol, so these guys thought they could come in and make money off Kenyan athletes and not payoff the powers that be in Kenya to avoid scrutiny. How ignorant do you have to be to not know how things work there.

What’s really interesting is that so many athletes have already been banned, but not a single one of the big agencies like Rosa & Associates has faced consequences.
And now Scholarbook an Agency Help Studenst, is supposed to be banned for non-compliance with AK and anti-doping regulations 🙆😅

Scholarbook is the primary recipient of these ill-gotten gains and has the biggest finger in the pie. My saying they make out like bandits wasn't just a figure of speech

Ok. I have a money quote. A source who is VERY well connected said the following to me via text.

These 3rd world countries are hilarious. Can you imagine UK Athletics shutting down a college recruitment service? And then issuing a statement that if you did work with the service that you may be exposed "to regulatory and eligibility risks."

3rd world for a reason = Corrupt.