A former University of Hawaii football player who is trying to get back his scholarship and spot on the team got a break in state court Friday when a judge granted his request to defer his no contest pleas to assault, harassment, resisting arrest and criminal property damage.

The deferral gives star defensive tackle Kennedy Tulimasealii the opportunity to avoid conviction and have the charges dismissed if he stays out of trouble for a specified period of time. Circuit Judge Christine Kuriyama specified four years.

Deputy Prosecutor Moani Crowell opposed the deferral and urged Kuriyama to send Tulimasealii to jail for a year.

“This case is mired in multiple facets of domestic violence,” Crowell said.

The charges stem from a tumultuous relationship between Tulimasealii and his 20-year-old ex-girlfriend, the complaining witness for most of the charges.

Defense lawyer Michael Green said Tulimasealii pleaded no contest not because he is guilty of any crimes but because he didn’t want to drag the case out.

“There’s two sides to this story as to what happened between him and this young woman,” Green said.

The former girlfriend was in favor of the deferral and for Tulimasealii to get back his scholarship and spot on the team, her lawyer, Eric Seitz, told Kuriyama. Seitz also criticized how UH officials handled the situation.

Tulimasealii, 21, was facing a maximum five-year prison term for felony criminal property damage, the most serious of the charges against him. He has no prior criminal history and Green said he had never been arrested before.

Green said he has already filed an appeal with the university to get Tulimasealii back on the team. The university dismissed Tulimasealii in June after he pleaded no contest to the charges. The school cut off his financial aid at the end of summer.

According to UH’s student-athlete code of conduct, any student-athlete convicted of or pleading guilty or no contest to a felony charge shall be permanently dismissed from the team.

Green said the student code has no provision for Tulimasealii’s situation.

“Whoever wrote the code never heard the word deferral because what the court ruled (Friday) is that she (the judge) didn’t accept the no contest plea,” he said.

Seitz said university officials knew of Tulimasealii’s volatile relationship with his then-girlfriend, another UH student, but didn’t take action to address it sooner, or to provide Tulimasealii any hope for his future after he was arrested.

“All they’ve done is kick him off the football team and apparently made it difficult for him to return to school this fall. And I think that’s atrocious,” he said.

UH spokesman Dan Meisenzahl said the university followed its polices and procedures in Tulimasealii’s case as soon as it was alerted of the situation by the media and that Seitz never specifically mentioned any policies or procedures that needed to be improved when school officials met with him about the case.