Perhaps the day is coming when a high school basketball player sits in the media center to announce where he’ll take his talents next fall. In front of him will be caps of Wheeler, Milton and Norcross.
Those three schools have won 11 of the past 12 state championships in Georgia’s highest classification, each with at least one starter who transferred in.
This season, the No. 1-ranked teams in AAAAAA — Wheeler’s boys and McEachern’s girls — are fortified with multiple move-ins who are major college prospects and will help shape the state tournament, again.
As far as the Georgia High School Association knows, it’s all legal. And perhaps it is. The pursuit of a college scholarship has become a sport unto itself, and many parents and blue-chip athletes are choosing high school programs in the same way they pick club teams and universities.
It’s all about getting to the next level. The trail of cars following the hometown kids to the state tournament is for Hollywood now.
The only thing the GHSA can do is ensure that rules aren’t being broken. Coaches aren’t allowed to recruit transfers, and transfers are required to make physical moves from one school district to another. Consider that Georgia’s transfer bylaws are generally tougher than most. Ohio and Florida only last year began to require that transfers live in their new school districts, as Georgia does, and both are now bracing for a legal challenge.
When those violations occur in Georgia, it’s rare that the GHSA uncovers them. In 2012, Milton’s head coach was forced out when other Fulton County schools provided evidence of undue influence in persuading players to transfer. Milton was declared ineligible for the state tournament.
Last fall, it was other city of Atlanta schools that blew the whistle on Grady, which allegedly had as many as 20 football players on its team that changed schools without moving into the Grady district.
Expect more schools and districts to police themselves going forward. But don’t expect a return to the days of the “Hoosiers’’ and the hometown teams that we romanticize.
Those days are gone. Maybe the time has come for us to just get over it.
About the Author
