The GHSA’s board of trustees voted 11-0 on Wednesday to make high school athletes ineligible for one year if they change schools twice after the ninth grade.
The board approved the new bylaw in June, but the GHSA requires a second board approval for any change to its constitution.
The rule will apply to athletes making a second transfer after Aug. 1 this year. Those working out with new teams this summer will be eligible, assuming their new schools have reported their transfers to the GHSA, as required.
“This new bylaw was developed organically by the (GHSA) eligibility committee and approved at all levels of the organization, but honestly, it was developed by many of our member schools who gave input and who have long said that too many students have been transferring too often for athletic purposes,” GHSA president Jim Finch said. “Transfer hardships (those outside the student’s control) do exist. But we’ve seen that to be the exception and not the rule. We need to get back to being an education-first organization.”
An athlete ruled ineligible can make a hardship appeal, but the new language in the constitution will make it difficult to win. It states that reasons for transferring “must have been beyond the control of the school, the student, and/or his parents, and such that none of them could reasonably have been expected to comply with the rule.”
Two-time transfers are not uncommon. One example was former Grayson basketball star Jacob Wilkins, now a Georgia freshman. Wilkins, the son of former Hawks great Dominique Wilkins, played at Heritage-Conyers, Parkview and Grayson.
Darnell Kelly, one of the state’s top quarterbacks this year, returned this offseason to Hughes, where he spent his freshman season. Kelly is a Colorado State-committed rising senior who played at Peachtree Ridge the past two seasons. He will be eligible because he made the moves before the new rule kicked in.
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