Transfer Tools
February 7, 2014
On Oct. 15 I used this space to talk about “Transfer Trends”; and I took that topic on the road, including it in MHSAA Update meetings throughout the state. I described an “epidemic.”
As I have said and written before (including in this space on Sept. 27, 2011), our transfer regulation is an inadequate tool for the fight ahead of us. It has failed to slow the growth of athletic-motivated transfers even after adoption of a rule for that purpose in 1997. Too few schools have wanted the hassle of alleging and documenting that a transfer was primarily for athletic reasons. In 2012, the leadership of the basketball and wrestling coaches associations, observing that current rules permitted several high-profile transfers in their sports, asked for a much tougher transfer rule – one that would subject most transfer students to a full year of ineligibility. Recognizing its legal responsibility to enforce the most narrow proscriptions possible, the Representative Council responded with more precision.
The new athletic-related transfer rule adopted last May extends the period of ineligibility from one semester to two for those students whose circumstances do not fit one of the existing 15 exceptions to the transfer regulation and where the student has engaged in certain activities during the previous 12 months that link the student to the new school’s athletic program.
If a student played high school sports during the previous 12 months and did one of the activities that linked that student to the new school athletically, the new rule doubles the period of ineligibility. If, for example, this transfer student attended an open gym at the new school, played summer or non-school sports on a team coached by one of the coaches of the sport at the new school, or received instruction in strength or conditioning from a personal trainer who coaches at the new school, then the period of ineligibility would double.
In addition to narrowly tailoring the new rule to the most obvious and egregious examples of an athletic-motivated or -related transfer, the Representative Council also provided necessary notice. The rule has not been “sprung” on students who may have done things before the rule change that would have made them ineligible. Because the rule has a 12-month run-up to consider, the Council provided almost 15 months’ notice. The rule takes full effect Aug. 1, 2014.
This is another example of defining a problem and designing the policy with precision. It’s both most educationally sound and judicially defensible.
Momentum
August 4, 2017
The 2017-18 school year holds great potential for the Michigan High School Athletic Association and for school sports in Michigan. Only time will tell us if the potential is greater for good than for bad.
There is positive momentum in promoting participant health and safety as the last of three advances in the health and safety preparation of coaches is implemented, as high schools’ mandatory concussion reporting and MHSAA-purchased concussion care “gap” insurance for 6th- through 12th-graders enter year three, and as higher limits of accident medical insurance is purchased by the MHSAA for all member junior high/middle schools and high schools, effective this month.
There is positive momentum in serving and supporting junior high/middle school programs where membership was up five percent last year over the year before. The MHSAA had an enjoyable, brand-broadening experience as “presenting sponsor” at a half-dozen junior high/middle school league track & field meets this past spring; and the MHSAA will be doing so during fall, winter and spring junior high/middle school tournaments during the 2017-18 school year.
The MHSAA’s Task Force on Multi-Sport Participation continues to develop strategies that focus on junior high/middle school students and their parents and to address the greatest health threat in youth sports – overuse injuries as the result of year-round sports specialization; and the Task Force is developing tools that help define and defend educational athletics.
Beneath these three over-arching themes, the MHSAA is addressing some pressing new problems – like what to do about venues that are no longer available to us for MHSAA tournaments in girls and boys basketball and individual wrestling – as well as some chronic concerns – like recruiting and retaining contest officials and athletic-related transfers. The loss of officials and the rise of athletic-related transfers are problems of nearly epidemic proportions.
The amount of resources the MHSAA will be able to bring to all these topics will be affected by the number of controversies that arise during the normal course of essential business in administering programs, policies and penalties. Such controversies can knock us off message, and rob us of resources that could allow us to be doing more of the positive things we know need to be done.
There is also the potential that we get distracted by the National Federation of State High School Associations, some of whose member state association CEOs want to talk more about NFHS sponsorship of national tournaments, even after decades of opposition to such events from both state and national educational associations, as well as clear and convincing evidence that no organization – from Little League to the NCAA – has been able to conduct national tournaments without adding to their existing problems and creating new pressures and new problems.
Excesses and abuses in school sports have their own momentum. We should not create more by NFHS sponsorship of the very events it was created to end.