‘Transfermania’ Changes Face of O.C. Prep Sports

When high school athletes move from school to school, they aren’t signing million-dollar contracts. But like professionals, they are changing teams in record numbers.

With college tuition skyrocketing and scholarships dwindling, Orange County high school athletes are becoming increasingly aggressive in seeking out schools with sports programs that showcase their talents. And parents are going to great lengths to help them.

Some families pick up and move, their only intent to boost a child’s athletic career. Others try to bend the rules governing athletic transfers to make a change without having to go to the trouble and cost of relocating.

“We have parents go to extremes. It’s unbelievable what they do,” said Stan Thomas, commissioner of the California Interscholastic Federation’s Southern Section, which has processed an unprecedented number of special transfer requests this school year.

While provoking a spirited debate among parents, athletic officials, coaches and the athletes themselves, the movement has had a profound effect on the balance of prep athletic power in the county and throughout Southern California.

Boys’ basketball at Trabuco Hills High has been extremely successful in the past six years, thanks largely to nine transfers who played during that period. The reputation has earned the school the nickname “Transfer Hills” in some quarters.

Ocean View’s baseball team, which has been ranked No. 1 in the county this year, has profited from the arrival of three transfers. The top-ranked Capistrano Valley volleyball team is led by Aaron Garcia, one of the nation’s top players and a transfer from Mission Viejo.

It is rare to find a successful athletic program these days that hasn’t been helped by at least one transfer. It’s as if professional-style free agency has hit high school athletics. Call it transfermania.

Thomas says he hasn’t seen anything like it. Since this school year began, his office--which oversees high school sports in Orange County and much of Southern California--has seen an explosion in special transfer requests. “We have processed more (this year) than in the last seven years combined,” Thomas said.

There are two basic ways for a student-athlete to change schools without changing addresses. One is to forgo a year of varsity athletics; only junior varsity competition is allowed. The other is to apply for a hardship waiver.

This school year, Thomas said, he has dealt with more than 1,100 transfer requests that involved sitting out a year; there have been 513 hardship requests.

Associate Commissioner Dean Crowley said roughly 80% of the hardship requests are denied. He said student applications are not permitted to cite athletics--failure to get along with a coach, or a program’s lack of success on the field--as a reason for transferring. Thomas said hardship waivers are typically awarded to students in cases of child abuse and gang or academic problems.

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But such requests represent only a fraction of transfers within the CIF’s Southern Section. They do not include students who legally move with parents or guardians from one school’s attendance area to another. Thomas said his office doesn’t hear about those unless the move is challenged.

“We are not an investigating agency,” Thomas said. “We don’t have a staff like the (National Collegiate Athletic Assn.) has. Unless we get a tip from someone, we have no way of knowing whether there are violations.”

The high school federation does get tips, however, and some of them pay off. Thomas said that last fall a boys’ basketball player in the section changed teams, saying that he had moved from one attendance area to another with his father.

Thomas said he was told by another league school that no move had taken place. A rival athletic director staked out what was supposed to be their former residence for six days and said he watched each morning as the player and his father left the home and drove to another district.

After further investigation, Thomas concluded that no move had taken place and declared the player ineligible. His team had to forfeit eight victories and was knocked from the section playoffs.

It doesn’t always work that way.

In 1991, the section received a tip that Ryan Filbeck, a pitcher from El Toro High, had moved to Esperanza improperly. The section alleged that Filbeck’s parents separated and filed for divorce simply to facilitate the boy’s transfer, with Ryan and his father moving into Esperanza’s district.

The section ruled Filbeck ineligible, but the family took the case all the way to Orange County Superior Court, which ordered that Ryan be reinstated.

“The majority of schools maintain the rules,” Thomas said, “but parents do take advantage of the system. It’s generally a father or mother who wants their son or daughter to be at the best program, and they’ll do it at any risk. Unfortunately, that hurts a lot of people who do it legally.”

Why bother trying to beat the system when you can simply pack up and move to the attendance area you want your child in? Thomas said cost and inconvenience are the main reasons. Selling a home these days without taking a big loss is often difficult and almost always time-consuming. Often, it is simply easier to petition the section for a hardship waiver--using any excuse--or have your child sit out a year of varsity competition.

But regardless of how students transfer, they are doing it. And the Southern Section is not alone, said Hal Harkness, Los Angeles City Section commissioner.

“We have had more hardship appeals this year than in the previous six,” Harkness said.

A notable example was the boys’ basketball team at Los Angeles Crenshaw, which won the State Division I championship this year with seven transfers. Harkness said he investigated and found nothing improper. But, he said, transferring has gotten out of control.

“High school athletes are becoming too important in the eyes of a lot of people,” Harkness said. “Because of the pot of gold at the end of rainbow, it becomes more important to play in prestigious programs.”

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For high school athletes, the pot of gold is a college scholarship that can save parents thousands of dollars. Many figure the way to secure one for their children is to place them in high-profile programs that hone skills and attract extra attention from college recruiters.

Volleyball player Garcia, whose parents are divorced, moved from the Mission Viejo attendance area to Capistrano Valley’s with a legal guardian after his sophomore year. He was in search of one thing--a scholarship.

It paid off. Garcia figures to be a first-team All Southern Section pick for the top-ranked Cougars this season. Next year, he will be a “walk-on”--non-scholarship--player at Stanford. After that, he said, he has been promised a scholarship will open up.

Garcia doubts that he would be going to Stanford had he not moved.

“It’s probably the best decision I’ve ever made,” he said. “Even though most of recruiting in volleyball is done through clubs, I still wouldn’t have gotten the recognition and I wouldn’t have been able to play at a high level in practice every day.”

Gary McKnight, boys’ basketball coach and athletic director at Mater Dei in Santa Ana--which has perhaps the best athletic program in Orange County--said the transfer issue is not going away.

“It’s difficult because good programs are going to attract good kids,” he said, “and college scholarships are so much more valuable now.”

Because McKnight teaches at a Catholic school--students can attend private schools regardless of where they live--and his team wins, he often has been accused of recruiting. In fact, Mater Dei in 1988 was put on probation by the Southern Section for the 1987 recruiting of Corona del Mar football players Danny O’Neil and Warren and Weston Johnson. The section said Mater Dei violated a CIF bylaw regarding undue influence.

But since 1988, Southern Section Commissioner Thomas said, “Mater Dei has really made a strong effort to comply.”

McKnight said that in the past four years he has had only four transfers--one was Reggie Geary, an All Southern Section player now a freshman at Arizona. But McKnight’s success is rooted in transfers. He built his program with such players as Tom Lewis, Mike Mitchell, Stuart Thomas and LeRon Ellis, all of whom transferred from other high schools.

“It’s just the way it is,” McKnight said. “Good programs will attract good kids.”

Rainer Wulf, basketball coach at Trabuco Hills, is another who says he will not apologize for attracting student-athletes to his program. He said winning athletic teams are not the only reason kids transfer to Trabuco Hills.

“Trabuco Hills is a growing area with lots of new housing,” Wulf said. “Parents shop around and try to find the best area for their kids. We’ve got strong academics, supportive parents, strong facilities and good coaches.

“Parents want to be in as good a positive environment (as possible) for their child. We just happen to be in an area that has a lot of positive things.”

Wulf, like McKnight, said he often hears accusations that he recruits. But he emphatically denies influencing players to change schools.

“I feel I run as good a program (as there is) in Orange County,” he said. “If we develop a reputation for having a good program, fine.”

Wulf said his program’s prestige essentially does its own recruiting.

“The parents talk over the summer,” he said. “There’s nothing we have to do to get players here.”

Still, Wulf knows he has his detractors.

“I think there’s some jealously involved,” he said. “People criticize me that don’t know me or my school.

“I’m sure people talk behind my back. I kind of laugh at it. If someone is going to accuse me of something, fine. I have nothing to hide.”

Wulf said he and coaches such as McKnight are merely playing to win.

“Our whole society is based upon competitiveness,” Wulf said. “Kids and their parents grow up in a competitive society. They want what’s best for their kids.”

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But Mark Thornton, Capistrano Valley boys’ basketball coach, said parents who move solely for athletic reasons aren’t always doing what is best for their child.

“I think they’re putting a lot of pressure on the kids by moving,” said Thornton, who lost potential starter Matt Moore to Trabuco Hills last year when the Moore family moved. “How many kids actually get Division I scholarships because of a transfer? The perception of what’s really happening is off. If a kid’s good, he’s going to be seen.”

Even McKnight tends to agree.

“If you’re real good, you’re going to get seen,” McKnight said. “You might want to put yourself in a situation where you make yourself better though.”

McKnight acknowledged that he would like to see more athletes stay in their area.

“I’m a traditionalist,” he said. “I liked the days of ‘be true to your school.’ But that’s not the case anymore. It’s ‘be true to your son.’ ”

Sometimes, loyalty and concern for a child go beyond athletics when it comes to a transfer. In Pat Gildea’s case, school at Huntington Beach had become miserable, at times frightening.

Gildea was working in a surf shop in downtown Huntington Beach, an area his father, Lt. Pat Gildea of the Huntington Beach Police Department, was trying to clean up. Gildea said his last name soon became a problem with certain elements in the neighborhood.

“We don’t exactly have a common name,” Gildea said. “I began to be concerned for my safety. Nothing ever happened, but I had some threats.”

In addition, Gildea wasn’t getting along with his baseball coaches--or his girlfriend.

“Once I broke up with my girlfriend, that’s when I said, “I’m getting out,’ ” Gildea said.

Last December, Gildea and his mother moved into a room they rented in the Ocean View attendance area so Pat could play for a coach he always admired, Steve Barrett.

Gildea said it was only a coincidence that Barrett teaches at Huntington Beach.

“Almost every coach has a bad reputation, but I never heard anything bad about Coach Barrett,” Gildea said. “I never said a word to him (at Huntington Beach). I wanted to say something, but I was just a little junior varsity player.”

Said Barrett: “I never knew about him until he walked on the field at Ocean View.”

Most county coaches are familiar with him now. Gildea, a 5-foot-10 junior right-hander, is one of the best pitchers on one of the county’s top teams. And he couldn’t be happier.

“The baseball players are treated with respect here,” he said. “At Huntington Beach, nobody cared. I know if I was still there, I wouldn’t be a starter.”

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McKnight said administrators and coaches can expect transfermania will continue as long as certain school districts continue to cut athletic funding.

“The weaker schools will lose kids because they don’t have the programs,” he said.

Harkness said there will always be a certain amount of transferring because of factors not related to athletics. But in order for the transfer explosion to abate, he said, society must place less emphasis on winning.

“A lot of people involved with high school athletics have their values going in the wrong direction,” he said. “They’ve become jaded.”

The Southern Section’s Crowley said parents are not sending their children the right message.

“You read about our senators and congressmen having ethics problems,” Crowley said. “We joke about cheating on our income taxes. What are we telling our kids about the rules? What are we perpetuating? We just try to get the extra edge on everything.

“Winning isn’t everything. That’s what we’ve forgotten. That it’s just a game. We’ve got to get back to reality.”

CIF Rules on Transfers

There are two basic California Interscholastic Federation bylaws that cover transfers in which a student’s family does not move:

No. 213 states that students who switch schools without a change of residence by their parents or guardians may not compete on the varsity level at a new school until they have attended it for one year. They are allowed to compete on a lower level, such as the junior varsity, if their eligibility is approved by the principals of both schools involved.

No. 214 provides that the penalty of sitting out a year of varsity competition can be waived if a student is under “hardship circumstances.” The bylaw defines a hardship as “an unforeseeable, unavoidable and uncorrectable act, condition or event, which causes the imposition of a severe and non-athletic burden upon the student or his or her family.” Section officials stress non-athletic , saying that failure to get along with a coach or dissatisfaction with an athletic program is not sufficient reason to grant a hardship waiver.