Too Many Athletes Are Making All the Wrong Moves

It’s decision time for the 45 high schools that make up the Catholic Athletic Assn.

On Thursday, principals and athletic administrators will convene at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to take up the issue of whether to impose transfer restrictions on athletes who don’t change residences.

A small number of individual leagues within the 522-school Southern Section have already begun to require students who don’t move to sit out one season.

But if athletic powerhouses such as Santa Ana Mater Dei, Santa Margarita and La Puente Bishop Amat agree to implement transfer restrictions, it would send a powerful message throughout the state that change is coming.

And change is needed. The status quo is unacceptable. According to Southern Section records, there were nearly 3,800 athletic transfers from the fall of 1999 through December of last year, and that doesn’t include athletes who physically moved.

High school sports was never intended to be a minor league system for college programs, with many of the same problems in collegiate sports trickling down, from recruiting scandals to grade scandals.

The growing number of transfer students is disrupting a sports system designed to encourage competition and teach life lessons. Instead, individuals are manipulating rules in the name of winning championships.

Since 1994, when the state Legislature passed the open enrollment law that gave parents more options on school choices, the movement of athletes has accelerated. The dilemma has been what to do without taking away a parent’s right to choose what’s best for their child.

In 1998, the Oxnard Union High School District, made up of six high schools, imposed the strictest transfer rule in the state. Any student who transfers without moving can’t participate in sports at any level for one year.

The rule appears to have helped cut transfers considerably in the Oxnard district. In 1997-98, there were 349 intradistrict transfers. In 1998-99, the first year of the rule, there were 261 transfers. In 1999-2000, there were 152.

Coaches in the Oxnard district are pleased that they know which eighth graders will end up coming to their school. They can evaluate them and plan for the future. But they also complain that the rule is benefiting private schools such as Ventura St. Bonaventure, which has won 42 consecutive football games without transfer restrictions.

Two baseball players tested the Oxnard rule and were forced to sit out their freshman seasons. Doug McGee and Matt Floryan didn’t want to attend Oxnard Rio Mesa High. They enrolled at Camarillo to be with friends. Both played on travel teams to make up for not being eligible at Camarillo and neither suffered athletically. But McGee’s father, Dan, vigorously fought the transfer rule.

“It was an insult,” he said. “We have a number of kids who lie about their address and compete in sports. I didn’t want to teach my son that. I also don’t think it’s right for a school district to punish a kid for telling the truth.”

Last season, McGee was Camarillo’s junior varsity most valuable player. He’ll probably start in right field on varsity this season as a junior. Floryan is a varsity starter in left field.

“I was thinking about the consequences of sitting out an entire year,” Floryan said. “I knew a lot of people at Camarillo and wanted to play with them. There was a whole bunch of mixed emotions. I guess [sitting out] was the consequence I had to take to play for the team.”

But forcing someone to sit out a year for transferring isn’t acceptable to parents in urban areas who want their children to escape poorly performing schools.

James Powell of Los Angeles writes: “When the playing field is even, you won’t have an issue with transfers. If you feel some kid from the inner city is taking your kid’s playing time, you can always transfer him from your nice protected surrounding to the inner city, and he can have the spot the transfer vacated.

“If the young athletes who transfer into your program had the same advantages in their own neighborhoods, they would gladly stay put. Parents transfer their children to give them the best opportunity to succeed. You think it’s only about sports. We know it’s about a lot more.”

Another dilemma is how to teach loyalty. Coaches want their players to be loyal to their programs, but as soon as a talented transfer checks in, a coach’s loyalty usually vanishes.

Tom from the Conejo Valley writes, “My son loved playing basketball for his high school and was looking forward to playing varsity his senior year. Unfortunately, the varsity coach told him in June of his junior year that he doesn’t take seniors that aren’t starters or the first off the bench [on junior varsity]. So even though my son was loyal to his high school basketball program for three years, doing what his coaches asked of him, he was not allowed to play.

“The player on the varsity team that played the same position was a transfer student that didn’t live in the boundaries of my son’s high school. My complaint about transfers is that they sometimes take the place of a player who did want to play for their local high school.”

There are no easy solutions to the transfer problem, but the system is in need of repair. If the CAA doesn’t act, it’s only a matter of time before others do.

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Eric Sondheimer can be reached at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com