Transfers Have Beaten a Path to Chatsworth : High school basketball: Coach Greentree denies recruiting as Joseph and McCoy join the Chancellors.

Two more boys’ basketball players have transferred to Chatsworth High, but Coach Sandy Greentree insists no recruiting has taken place.

Jerome Joseph, an All-Southern Section guard as a freshman last season at Montclair Prep, and T.J. McCoy, a 6-foot-2 starting guard at Faith Baptist as a freshman, will enroll at Chatsworth, their parents said Thursday.

Eddie Miller, a 6-7 sophomore forward who failed to meet academic requirements at Notre Dame, transferred to Chatsworth over the summer.

“It’s just coincidental,” Greentree said. “You have to ask the parents why they want to come here.”

McCoy’s mother, Michelle Smith, said the family decided Chatsworth offers a better academic program than Faith Baptist and the school is closer to the family’s new home. They moved from Canoga Park to Chatsworth in February, Smith said.

Smith said her son has been a friend of Joseph’s for several years, but neither his transfer nor that of Miller affected her decision.

“We didn’t even know (Joseph was enrolling at Chatsworth),” she said. “I just left a prayer meeting, so you know I’m not lying about that.”

Smith said she has spoken to City Section Commissioner Hal Harkness and believes McCoy, who averaged 6.9 points a game for the Contenders, will be immediately eligible because the family moved. Harkness was unavailable for comment.

Joseph, who lives in Lake View Terrace, was granted an opportunity transfer from Verdugo Hills based on professional courtesy--his mother has been a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District for 25 years.

His eligibility will be determined at an Oct. 21 hearing with the City Section. Joseph’s father, Al, will argue that he could no longer afford to send his son to Montclair Prep after he was released by the school as a physical education teacher and assistant coach Monday.

The father said he originally planned to send Jerome, who averaged 17.3 points and 3.5 assists for the Mounties last season, and his daughter, Jennifer, to Granada Hills, but changed his mind when he learned the school does not have a girls’ volleyball team.

“It is a coincidence,” Al Joseph said of the transfers. “If Granada Hills had a girls’ volleyball team, that’s where we’d be.”

Greentree said the transfers are unrelated.

“I had never even heard of (Joseph) before,” Greentree said. “That’s the honest truth.”

Miller, who lives within the Cleveland attendance boundary, will be ineligible for varsity basketball unless he moves into the Chatsworth district or obtains a hardship waiver.

Miller, a key reserve on a Notre Dame team that won the Southern Section Division III-A title last season, said his family plans to move into the Chatsworth attendance area.

The players aren’t the first transfers to gravitate toward the Chatsworth program, which last season was elevated to the City 4-A Division. Canoga Park senior Steve Woodruff joined the team in midseason last year after he shoved Coach Jeff Davis during a heated locker room discussion.

Woodruff was given an opportunity transfer to Chatsworth, where Greentree immediately added him to the roster, a move that area coaches criticized.

Marcel Wilson transferred to Chatsworth last year from Granada Hills, over the objections of the basketball and football coaches at his former school.

Wilson, now a senior, requested and received an opportunity transfer based on academic grounds. He started for the Granada Hills football and basketball teams as a sophomore.

Coaches at Granada Hills, openly suspicious of the motives behind Wilson’s transfer request, asked that Wilson be denied athletic eligibility at Chatsworth. However, they were told opportunity transfers must include athletic privileges.

Opportunity transfers are made between school principals and are not subject to review by the City athletics office.

Wilson, a 6-4 swingman, averaged 9.3 points a game and was a second-team All-West Valley League selection. The Chancellors, who finished 14-11 overall, shared the West Valley title with Cleveland.

Staff writer Steve Elling contributed to this story.