Sep 27, 2018 3 min read

It should come as no surprise that some schools recruit star athletes to play on their teams.

Parochial schools long have been accused of this practice in Pennsylvania, prompting state and district high school league officials to make changes this year in an attempt to level the playing field.

The clearest example of this prep sports loophole might have cost the Bishop Canevin girls’ basketball team a state championship this year. The Catholic high school in suburban Pittsburgh played Neumann-Goretti of Philadelphia in the championship game, but that team had the help of a late-season transfer.

Diamond Johnson played most of her sophomore season in her Virginia hometown, but transferred to Neumann-Goretti in February just in time for that team’s basketball playoffs. Johnson helped to lead her newfound school to a state championship title over Bishop Canevin, which felt it was robbed by allowing the late-season recruit to play.

The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association’s board of directors passed a rule in July that will require any student who transfers as a sophomore or older to sit out the following year’s postseason unless a hardship can by shown.

While the PIAA tried to implement a black-and-white standard for transfers, there’s still a gray area for students who attend a specialized curriculum at a neighboring school.

That seems to be exactly what is happening at two school districts in our area.

A legal dispute is bubbling to the surface between the Trinity Area and Jefferson-Morgan school districts over whether two students in the vocational-agriculture programs should be considered full-time students and, therefore, be permitted to participate in the other school’s sports.

Trinity is suing Jefferson-Morgan, claiming the school district in Greene County hasn’t paid the full invoice for those two students who are attending its vo-ag classes. Jefferson-Morgan officials countered in a response to the lawsuit that they should not be required to pay the full $12,331 tuition per student – they’ve paid a quarter of that – because the students only go to two courses at Trinity.

But an underlying detail in Jefferson-Morgan’s response last week didn’t mince words when officials made the bombshell accusation that Trinity is using the vo-ag program to recruit athletes for its sports programs.

“That (Trinity) would admit the students in question only as ‘full-time transfer students’ was the result and in furtherance of its practice of recruiting student-athletes from other districts and attempting to increase its revenue at the expense of other school districts,” Jefferson-Morgan stated in its response to the lawsuit.

It does seem ridiculous that Trinity considers Jefferson-Morgan’s two students as studying full time in the district when they’re both taking only two classes.

There seems to be a simple solution to all of this: A district whose students study elsewhere should pay a per-credit rate, and athletes should only be eligible to play sports in the district where they take the majority of their classes.

Even with the competitive nature of scholastic sports, there’s no reason to pit school districts against each, either both financially and academically.