Don’t punish Colorado’s high school athletes. Instead, protect them from vulture recruiters (Editorial)

Colorado s high school coaches and athletic directors are clamoring for updated rules to make it easier for participant athletes to transfer schools The need for amendment they reported Denver Post reporter Kyle Newman can be detected 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 analysis 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 obstacle for Newman speaking out against the proposal that the Colorado High School Athletics Association CHSAA adopt a one-time free transfer for trainee athletes The recruiting piece the pre-enrollment contact piece is something that CHSAA cannot police just because they don t have the manpower and it s already happening rampantly Krapcha reported 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 Learner transfers would not be a dilemma if coaches were not recruiting We want Colorado students to have choice when it comes to their learning and thankfully our constituents schools no longer confine students to schools based on their zip codes Yes a pupil 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 trainee 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 effort to power-house activity 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 inevitably occurred and they continue to occur in current times 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 participant 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 majority of fundamental for students advancement and growth rather than what is majority fundamental for coaches and athletic directors winning at all costs is critical at this moment Countless 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 cure to this intractable difficulty 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 crew boosters Until coaches are suspended for an entire season for recruiting a attendee 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 intricate 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 club likely to compete in the state championship CHSAA s bylaws in the present emphasize analysis of the behavior of parents and de-emphasize the behavior of coaches For example the bylines define broken-home but do not definitely define recruiting Coaches are encouraged to forward email inquiries about their sports initiative 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 questioned to instead demonstrate a hardship that forced their child to switch schools so that the apprentice can play varsity sports uninterrupted But coaches aren t reported in the bylaws what they hazard 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 club engaged in the recruitment of a newly transferred aspirant in order for that scholar 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 development they deserve at the school of their choice And we all want to protect high school athletics from the corrupting influences of recruitment Related Articles Renck Cherry Creek star Jayden Fox is fast explosive and in the present day s sports uncommonly unselfish Loopholes in CHSAA s transfer system allow program-jumping in high school sports ADs and coaches say Keeler If Rockies manager Warren Schaeffer wants to right Dick Monfort s ship this ex-Colorado closer wants to help No Cherry Creek rides Jayden Fox s big day to wild Class A win over Fairview CHSAA state football playoffs How the quarterfinals in Class A A and A played out The road forward is for CHSAA to stick to its guns on aspirant transfers but to switch the focus from students to coaches Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns editorials and more To send a letter to the editor about this article submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail