Jumping Ship Area High Schools Face Trend Of Athletics-Related Transfers

You can’t rely on your roster anymore.

High school athletes are switching schools faster than athletic directors can keep team lists up to date.

It’s transfer turbulence.

A quick look through Greater Spokane League soccer rosters this spring is a perfect example of what’s happening in the area.

Two Rogers players and one from Shadle Park split for North Central, the 1999 GSL champion. Central Valley’s top player left for Ferris. CV also lost a player to East Valley, but picked up a player from the Knights.

Does it matter anymore where a player competes?

Administrators, activities coordinators and coaches say yes. And they are concerned with the transfer trend.

“I’m just not sure what kids are thinking and what parents are thinking,” said Mead softball coach John Barrington, who lost a player to Lewis and Clark this season. “It should be that kids go to the school where they’re supposed to go to school, where they grew up. That’s how it used to be.

“It’s a bad lesson for kids. There’s no commitment to the group you started with. You turn on ESPN and this is like a free-agency thing.”

CV soccer coach Craig Griffiths can’t believe the number of players changing schools and becoming eligible. Neither can University activities coordinator Ken VanSickle.

“It’s kind of amazing how it happens sometimes,” VanSickle said. “Some kids have legitimate reasons and some you shake your head at sometimes. If anybody leaves, I guess in their mind they have legitimate reasons.”

Andy Sather says he had a valid reason.

Sather transferred to Ferris from Central Valley for his senior year, though he still lives in Liberty Lake. He said he left the Spokane Valley school for personal reasons, which he didn’t want to discuss. Sather, a standout soccer player, pleaded his case before the District 8 eligibility committee and was granted a hardship.

So Sather is playing for the Saxons.

U-Hi junior Jesse Lamon, meanwhile, didn’t meet the committee’s hardship criteria last year and had to sit out the 1999 tennis season after transferring from Freeman for academic reasons. He is the Titans’ top singles player this spring.

Lamon said Freeman didn’t offer courses he was interested in, such as jazz band, French, photography and honors classes.

“I also had friends there and it was a better environment,” Lamon said. “The reason they denied me is because they said academics weren’t a criteria that was valid for granting a hardship.”

He appealed the committee’s decision and lost.

“I think the criteria they use is unfair because they don’t use academics as a valid reason and that should be one of the most important reasons,” Lamon said. “In some cases they should limit it, but that’s if the reason is just to play sports. My reason wasn’t for sports. I told the truth and didn’t make up any stories.”

The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association transfer rule stipulates that without a change of residence, athletes are ineligible for one year in sports they have competed in during the past year. It is in place partly to help discourage recruiting.

Sather insists his switch had nothing to do with soccer - Ferris placed third in the GSL in ‘99 and is expected to finish as one of the league’s top teams again. CV was second in the league last season.

He said his Saxons teammates also are his club soccer teammates, so he chose Ferris because he knew he would have plenty of peer support there. If his friends had been at Rogers - the GSL’s last-place soccer team - he said he would have gone there.

Griffiths knows he can’t do anything about losing Sather, a first-team all-league choice in ‘99.

“He’s been a solid player for me the last two years and I hate to see a situation like that happen,” Griffiths said. “But I still have 18 other guys who have to step up and do their jobs. Each year, something comes up, another bump.”

Rogers coach Chris Sande understands.

“When we finally start to develop some cohesion with our players, kids leave and it puts us in a hard situation,” he said.

Transferring is not a new thing. Here’s a sampling of transfer cases:

* When Sande became Rogers’ new coach seven years ago, three starters transferred to Shadle Park.

* Three years ago, Lewis and Clark’s Kaylene Fountain pitched at Ferris the week before spring break, then at LC the week after.

* Isaac Carter played football for Ferris in 1995 and ‘96, then for North Central in ‘97 before transferring to LC. But he didn’t play for the Tigers.

* Former GSL softball starting pitchers Janessa Karstens and Shanelle Test played for three different high schools in their careers. Karstens began at Riverside, then went to North Central before finishing at Mead. Test played for NC, Mead and CV. The changes in schools were because of changes in residence.

“To have a student move from school A to school B to school C to school D would be incredibly unusual and only permitted when circumstances require it,” said Emmett Arndt, principal at Shadle Park and chair of the District 8 eligibility committee.

* Gonzaga Prep basketball star Chris Bond, a member of this year’s Spokesman-Review all-area team, played for Cheney last season. But he transferred after athletic code violations that would have made him ineligible to play for the Blackhawks this season. Other players also have transferred when they would have been ineligible for disciplinary reasons.

* Kyle Gazaway, second-team all-league in football and a starter for the U-Hi basketball team, left the school in early December. He transferred to West Valley and played junior varsity basketball for the Eagles.

* First-team all-GSL softball player Annie Boyd began this school year at Ferris and is the new starting third baseman at Shadle Park.

Boyd would only say that she transferred for personal reasons that had to do with a family member. She said many people thought her switch was for softball, but that had nothing to do with it.

“Situations like that can be, have been and will be detrimental to districts if they’re not handled,” said Mt. Spokane girls basketball coach Jeanne Helfer. “Sometimes too much value is placed on athletics. When I look in the mirror, I have to ask myself `Do I want my daughter to know why I moved her, just because of a silly basketball game, or a silly baseball game?’ I couldn’t do that.”

Helfer has been affected by the transfer situation. She lost two players to Mead who likely would have helped Mt. Spokane become a GSL playoff contender. The Wildcats placed ninth in league this season at 6-14.

The parents of Courtney and Adriane Ferguson fought to keep their daughters at Mead when the district divided into two high schools in 1998. They live in the Mt. Spokane attendance area. The decision was not based on athletics, Bill Ferguson said. Courtney Ferguson has signed with Saint Mary’s College.

Bill Ferguson and his wife, Karen, went all the way to court to prove that Adriane had a hardship and needed to stay at Mead.

“They’re where they should be,” said Karen Ferguson, who did not want to go into details. “It wasn’t the policy we as a family were against. It was that Adriane did not get an objective look at the hardship we stated because she was an athlete. We’re still supportive of the district and community.”

Yet Helfer took it personally.

“It’s like taking (Seattle Supersonics star) Gary Payton off the team and saying `Here, deal with it,”’ she said. “You feel betrayed, but not so much for you. You just hurt for the kids. You feel sorry for the girls, they grew up together. Sometimes those situations last a lot longer than just high school.

“You could tell it was hard. They missed the friendships. But I deal with the hand I’m dealt.”

Mt. Spokane activities coordinator John Miller is a member of the eligibility committee and agrees there is a problem with all the transfers.

“People try to exploit the system,” he said. “I believe the egos of adults override what might be in the best interest of the student.”

Yet Ferris football coach Clarence Hough says sometimes it’s in the best interest of athletes, their teammates, parents and coaches to let players go where they want.

“I’m happy when those kids leave anyway,” he said. “It’s not worth it. Ultimately, we want to work with kids who are happy to be there and loyal to the school.”

Committee takes its job seriously

Shadle’s Arndt vows that the eligibility committee takes every case seriously and looks out for situations when an athlete is trying to change schools purely for an athletic edge.

Administrators don’t want transfer students to take roster spots from players who live in the attendance area of the school in which they are enrolled.

The eligibility committee meets three times a year, before each sports season. Meetings can last up to four hours as the board hears from student-athletes who want to switch school districts. They hear about 20 cases a year, Arndt said.

Of those cases, GSL secretary and committee member Randy Ryan estimates that half are denied.

“That committee tends to be very conservative,” Ryan said. “As school people, we do need the residence rule, otherwise it would be crazy. We all believe they should play where they live. We think the residence rule is there to protect students in the school from someone coming in from the outside and taking their place.”

Hough sees it differently, and recommends opening up enrollment.

“They’re just splitting hairs when they rule kids ineligible,” Hough said. “If they want to move, so be it. Make the parents happy, make the kids happy. That’s what you’re after anyway.”

When a student changes schools within a district - called a guidance transfer in Spokane School District 81 - it is up to the two schools involved and usually goes through counselors and principals, Arndt said. Shadle currently has about 150 transfer students who don’t live in the attendance area.

Yet, Arndt said, it’s a stretch to say there is more transferring going on now than in the past.

WIAA executive director Mike Colbrese said the WIAA hears about 100 eligibility appeals each year - which he estimates to be about 10 percent of requests - and reverses about 25 percent of those.

Facing former teammates

Sather anticipated animosity on March 3 when he suited up for the first time against his old school. He battled against his former teammates, his friends.

“It was just the typical stuff you’d expect if you left a school,” Sather, 18, said of the razzing he received in the Saxons’ 2-1 non-league loss. “It was nothing out of the ordinary. They were nice, too. During halftime, I talked to them, but while we were playing, it was different.”

When the NC soccer team played Rogers, Indians coach Tim Cox detected anger in the Pirates players toward their ex-teammates.

Mead’s Barrington said he believes off-season programs contribute to the mass moving. For example, athletes from North Spokane often team up with those from the Valley or the South Hill for summer tournaments. Players are exposed to other schools’ coaches, too, which could lead to recruiting.

Cox isn’t worried. After the abundance of transfers this spring, he believes the system will correct itself.

“I think they’re probably going to clamp down on it,” he said. “I do have faith in the system that it’s going to be strictly enforced.”