Reform recruiting in Colorado high school sports

Colorado’s high school coaches and athletic directors are clamoring for updated rules to make it easier for student athletes to transfer schools. The need for reform, they told Denver Post reporter Kyle Newman, can be found in the sad stories of teenagers who were forced to miss playing time in their varsity sport because their family’s move was deemed sports motivated and not “bona fide.”

The examples in Newman’s excellent investigation, however, only drive home for us the importance of another prohibition in Colorado high school sports — the ban on recruiting athletes.

Eaglecrest basketball coach Jarris Krapcha highlighted the problem for Newman, speaking out against the proposal that the Colorado High School Athletics Association (CHSAA) adopt a one-time free transfer for student athletes:

“The recruiting piece — the pre-enrollment contact piece — is something that CHSAA cannot police simply because they don’t have the manpower, and it’s already happening rampantly,” Krapcha said. “If you allow a one-time free transfer, it’s going to be open season on recruiting other players from other schools.”

In other words, recruiting is already happening. Coaches are — against clear policies spelled out in the bylaws of CHSAA — talking to students and their parents about enrolling with their school.

Student transfers would not be a problem if coaches were not recruiting. We want Colorado students to have choice when it comes to their education, and thankfully, our public schools no longer confine students to schools based on their zip codes. Yes, a student or his parents could be motivated to transfer or move based on athletic success of a school or promises from an athletic director, but there are a whole host of good reasons a student could transfer: to escape bullying, to access advanced coursework, or for a shorter commute.

The thought of varsity athletes who chose for healthy reasons to switch schools (absent unhealthy recruitment) being punished by a half-year loss of playing time is unpleasant to say the least.

But we know that coaches are recruiting. The top athletes in the state are not hopping from power-house program to power-house program without assurances of playing time and position, or at the very least, conversations about coaching style and practice schedules.

“I can say that violations do occur, they have always occurred, and they continue to occur today. We have unfortunately had violations this fall that have been addressed and penalized,” wrote CHSAA’s Mike Krueger in response to questions from The Denver Post editorial board about student transfers and recruitment.

“Hundreds of thousands of students, families and coaches in Colorado participate the right way, for the right reasons,” he concluded. “Our responsibility is to protect the fairness and integrity of the experience for them. It takes all of us to act with integrity, and that responsibility will not only continue, but in this day and age it will be more pronounced.”

Keeping high school athletics focused on what is most important for students — growth and development — rather than what is most important for coaches and athletic directors — winning at all costs — is critical at this moment. Many college sports, especially football and basketball, feel more like professional sports every day, and the term “student-athlete” is becoming an oxymoron even for sports that once avoided the corruption of professionalization.

So what is the solution to this intractable problem?

We urge CHSAA’s Legislative Council, a body with representatives from every league across the state, to consider shifting the focus of enforcement from the actions of students’ parents and the punishment of students to scrutiny of the behavior of coaches, athletic directors, school administrators and team boosters. Until coaches are suspended for an entire season for recruiting a student to transfer from another school, the bad behavior will continue. Until athletic directors face consequences for conversations that are clearly prohibited by CHSAA, players will continue to get recruited.

Krueger points out, correctly, that recruitment is hard to police, and he notes that CHSAA has and does impose penalties when coaches are caught cheating.

But policing recruiting can’t be any more difficult than trying to determine if a child switched schools because of his or her parents’ divorce or because he or she really wants to play for a team likely to compete in the state championship.

CHSAA’s bylaws currently emphasize analysis of the behavior of parents and de-emphasize the behavior of coaches. For example, the bylines define “broken-home” but do not actually define “recruiting.” Coaches are encouraged to forward email inquiries about their sports program to the school’s administration, but are not required to do so. Likewise, parents who don’t have the money to make a bona fide move and, say, buy a house right next door to Cherry Creek High School are asked to instead demonstrate a hardship that forced their child to switch schools so that the student can play varsity sports uninterrupted. But coaches aren’t told in the bylaws what they risk when promising an athlete that they can start at quarterback if they move schools.

The focus in the bylaws feels all wrong.

CHSAA should keep its prohibition on sports-motivated transfers, but refocus its enforcement on coaches rather than parents and students.

That could look like requiring a coach to sign a legally-binding affidavit swearing that no one associated with the team engaged in the recruitment of a newly transferred student in order for that student to play without a waiting period. Then, when text messages about playing time and access to college recruiters emerge, there will be no crocodile tears when the coach gets banned from coaching for CHSAA schools.

We all want Colorado’s high school students to get the education they deserve at the school of their choice. And we all want to protect high school athletics from the corrupting influences of recruitment.