His kingdom would change transfer rules

Johnny (or Janie) goes to sleep dreaming of collegiate athletic glory. Their parents dream the scholarship dream with them.

They pump enough iron to become the answer to a Black Sabbath song title trivia question. Money that could help finance the cost of a college education is spent on club sports to feed the dream.

Dreams turn to reality. The lure of that college scholarship continues to dangle like a carrot and stick just out of reach, but Johnny and Janie get no satisfaction in high school. Happiness, they reason, lies at another school, with a better team, or a more capable coach.

Then you read about such coaches being axed and state titles being stripped following investigations into recruiting allegations. The kids lose, but you learn of yet more athletes switching schools two or three years into their careers. You wonder what’s gone wrong.

Transfers, often abetted by the school system itself, are common at nearly every Greater Spokane League school for every reason conceivable. Kids from different schools play on select travel teams. Parents and athletes bond and want to stay together in high school.

Talented athletes from small schools seek to test themselves at a higher level of competition. The lure of playing for a winner is made possible by school district choice and open-enrollment policies. Overzealous parents and coaches who say they are only looking after the best interests of kids become part of this gathering storm.

So you have situations such as that at Chief Sealth in Seattle, where coaches were fired and state titles forfeited, and most recently at Bastrop High in Louisiana, where athletes who played there after being displaced from other schools by Hurricane Katrina were ruled ineligible – despite objections – because of recruiting violations and their state title forfeited.

Truth be known, most young athletes would profit more by the experiences at the school they should be attending, rather than circumventing adversity. If they are good enough, colleges will find them regardless of the size of their school.

What’s to be done to nip this insanity in the bud, short of eliminating high school athletics (which I’m sure would suit some in academia just fine)? If I were commissioner for a day, I’d:

“Require that student-athletes live within the attendance boundaries of the school they attend. If you want to play elsewhere, parents must sell their house and move there to be eligible (none of this apartment rental nonsense, either).

“If you do transfer without moving, you sit out a year (no debate, litigation, or emotional medical excuse, either). If the NCAA can require it at the Division I level, why not in high school? A former coach I know from Texas said that in his day, even if you moved from one district to another you were ineligible for a year.

“Eliminate open enrollment and minimize choice. Do so and you reduce the risk of transferring for sports purposes.

“If at all possible, hire in-building coaches, who you’d think have a better feel for school culture and are more likely to build programs within their attendance boundaries. It seems to me that coaches from out-of-building, particularly those with summer club teams, are at a greater risk of abetting transferring.

“Any violation of WIAA rules would result in dismissal of coaches, ineligibility for players and forfeiture of games and state titles. Is winning a game worth that risk?

Whatever happened to coaches relishing the challenge of building their programs from within? What can be gained, other than ill will, when a school stockpiles athletes at the expense of teams that have been scavenged?

Transferring schools for athletic purposes has gone on for all the years I’ve been covering sports and will continue long afterward, for policing it is easier said than done.

That doesn’t mean the effort to curb the practice should be ignored or that switching of schools for athletics is any less reprehensible.