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.
“What Can I Do?”
October 16, 2015
One of the very first chapters that educators wrote on the fundamentals of school-sponsored, student-centered sports described the bad of single-sport specialization and the benefits of multi-sport participation. And the basic policies of educational athletics have flowed for decades from that philosophy.
Sadly, every reasonable restraint that educators placed on school sports was eventually exploited by non-school youth sports organizations and commercial promoters which have seen the world quite differently and have filled almost every gap in school sports programs with alternative or additional programs that started sooner, traveled further, competed longer and ended later than educators believed was healthy for youth and adolescents and compatible with their academic obligations.
Recently (and as reported in this space on Sept. 15, 2015), there has been a chorus of concerns from many different corners echoing the voices of educators who had just about given up on this issue. Suddenly, early single-sport specialization by youth is being attacked from many directions as being injurious for youth, and the multi-sport experience (aka, “balanced participation”) is being advanced as the healthy prescription.
Now I’m being asked by interscholastic athletic administrators: “Yes, I hear the chatter, and I see the evidence and anecdotes; but what can I do?” Well, one idea is to follow the lead of St. Joseph High School Athletic Director, Kevin Guzzo.
Last school year Kevin started the “Iron Bears Club” to recognize and reward the school’s three-sport athletes. And last month Kevin made the multi-sport imperative a central theme in his annual report to the St. Joseph Board of Education.
Little steps in a local community? Perhaps. But multiply Kevin’s efforts by 500 or more schools in Michigan? It could be a sea change. And it would be good for kids.