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Transfer Trends

October 15, 2013

A glance at the handbook of any statewide high school athletic association informs you that transfers have been the most problematic eligibility issue across the country over the years. In the MHSAA Handbook there are 12 high school athletic eligibility regulations covered over 25 pages, and one-fourth of these pages are devoted to one rule: the transfer regulation.

The MHSAA’s transfer rule casts a broad net over the turbulent waters of school sports . . .

  • Waters stirred by the inherent nature of athletics where people often look for competitive advantage, and sometimes look for it in inappropriate places;
  • Waters made more choppy by the domestic discord in which increasing numbers of students reside; and
  • Waters made rougher still by economic hardships in which more families seem trapped.

Add to this bullying, cyber bullying and hazing from which students seek to escape, and transfers seem epidemic.

Because the transfer regulation catches some “fish” in its wide net that it should not snare, schools have a mechanism to request waivers from the Executive Committee. Last school year, 352 waiver requests were made and 265 were approved.

It is readily admitted that the net fails to snatch some fish that it should catch and withhold from competition for a semester or longer. The most obvious and egregious of those occur when a student changes schools for reasons related to sports and without compelling medical or family reasons. More of those will be snared beginning in 2014-15, and those that are will face a period of ineligibility that is twice as long as other students who are ineligible under the basic transfer rule.

The new rule (click here and go to Appendix B in the Summary of RC Action) links extended ineligibility after a transfer to certain activities before the transfer. If a student played high school sports during the previous 12 months and did one of the “linking” activities to the new school, and if that student is ineligible for one semester under the basic transfer rule (none of the 15 automatic exceptions applies), then the period of ineligibility is doubled in the sport in which the links exist: two semesters instead of one.

This is not the end of the story, but merely the next chapter to develop and administer a transfer rule that facilitates quick eligibility for more deserving situations and extended ineligibility for more athletic related changes.

In An Instant

August 4, 2015

The icebergs that enter the harbors along Newfoundland’s north shore started to form thousands of years ago. They broke from ice flows 10 times their size and then got caught in a current that carried them on a 1,000-mile, two-year journey to “Iceberg Alley.” Some of them drift into harbors and, with seven-eighths of their mass below the surface, they get grounded. Eventually they break apart and disappear.

My wife and I “discovered” one of these grounded ‘bergs near the shore of cozy little Coffee Cove. After a 15-minute hike, we got closer to this sparkling monster than third base is to home plate. We each snapped dozens of pictures.

Just as we were turning to begin our hike back to “civilization,” we heard what we thought was a loud gunshot. But what actually occurred was a portion of the iceberg breaking off and falling into the water.

What we had taken pictures of moments earlier no longer existed as it had at that time. In an instant, the iceberg had changed, without respect for the thousands of years in the making and the hundreds of miles of traveling.

A few days after we returned to Michigan, Rich Tompkins died, apparently healthy, just after waterskiing. Death came without respect for the miles Rich had traveled to serve student-athletes and coaches, and without regard to all the victories his teams had earned and MHSAA championships they had won.

I last saw Rich on Valentine’s Day at the first-ever Fremont High School Hall of Fame induction banquet where Rich and many of his athletes were honored. The pictures taken that night are of people and circumstances that can never be reassembled.

We need to more fully appreciate the miracle of such moments. They can be gone in an instant.