Southern Section Tables Proposal on Transfer Rules

A proposal that would toughen transfer rules and end eligibility for foreign exchange students was tabled Thursday at the CIF Southern Section General Council meeting in Norwalk.

The 54-member council voted, 32-22, not to act on a plan introduced by Dr. Dennis Evans, Corona del Mar High School principal and president of the Sea View League, in September.

“This is exactly what we wanted to do in the first place,” Evans said after the proposal was tabled. “We wanted to stir things up. The beauty of being tabled is that the proposal wasn’t defeated.”

The proposal sought to:

--Prohibit students from competing in sports if they had transferred from one public high school to another until their parents or legal guardians move into the new school’s attendance area. The same ruling would apply to transfers from a private school to a public school.

--Make students who reside in the attendance area of a public high school and attend a private school and then transfer to that public school ineligible to compete in athletics for two years after their date of transfer. The same ruling would apply to a transfer from a public school to a private school.

--Make foreign exchange students ineligible for all varsity competition.

As expected, Evans’ proposal met with strong resistance from the representatives of private school leagues. The Rev. Richard Loomis, principal of Daniel Murphy High in Los Angeles and president of the Catholic Athletic Assn., said the plan would “create an additional administrative burden for the CIF by multiplying appeals cases.”

Loomis also said the plan created a double standard for public and private schools and added, “The legal possibilities here are staggering. The real problem is bogus moves and false addresses made by the student-athlete.”

Bruce Kitchen, principal of Hesperia High and the San Andreas League representative, said he was sympathetic to Evans’ position but that he was “concerned with the stringent, two-year penalty for transfer students.”

Despite the move to table the proposal, the issue is far from dead.

Evans’ plan to eliminate foreign exchange students’ varsity eligibility was included in a committee’s report that was presented to the General Council by Stan Thomas of the Tustin Unified School District.

The six-member committee also recommended a tightening of the rule concerning the waiver of residence eligibility requirement for student-athletes who request a transfer because their parents have filed for divorce.

“The spirit of this rule has been bent, broken and ignored,” Thomas said.

“Parents are filing for divorce, paying a $3 fee and reconciling in a week,” said Moe Chavez, General Council president. “This wasn’t the intent of the original rule.”

The committee presented a four-page summary of a questionnaire seeking input on residence and transfer rules presently in the section’s rule book. The committee will present its final recommendations, review the report in March and then a vote on any changes in May.

Also Thursday, the council voted to adopt the following measures:

--Scoring for boys’ tennis playoff matches will be changed from a 4-2 format (four singles, two doubles) to a 3-3 format (three singles, three doubles) beginning in the 1986 season.

--The discus throw will be added as a scoring event in Southern Section track and field meets for the 1987 season.

--Baseball players will have the option of wearing metal cleats for the 1987 season. The measure must still be passed by the State Federal Council, but that appears to be a formality. The proposal was endorsed by the Southern California Baseball Coaches Assn.