High school athletes change schools to chase after victories and scholarships

Luther Burbank High School’s football team has a lot going for it.

The Titans’ coach, Eddie Elder, is a charismatic alum who made it all the way to an NFL roster. The school has a large on-campus football stadium with a nice artificial turf field. And the program has a history of success, with a 13-year streak of postseason appearances that ended in 2018.

The area around the high school still produces tons of talent. The problem, Elder said, is the kids transfer to other high schools and don’t play for Burbank, which went 1-9 in its last full season.

“You can name a school, I’m pretty sure they have a Burbank kid that lives in our area around the corner from the school,” Elder said. “(Kids transfer to) several schools, in the east or Elk Grove, and they live right around the corner from Burbank.

“Open enrollment has been challenging for us.”

Schools in affluent areas draw athletes from less-affluent areas who want to be seen and recruited by college coaches. Schools like Folsom and Oak Ridge offer that kind of visibility, with connections to major college sports programs. Plus they have sparkling weight rooms and stadiums filled with cheering fans.

Private schools are also pulling students from public schools, and that’s what draws the most ire from public-school coaches.

“What I have a problem with is kids are wooed away and offered things like, we’ll pay your tuition and take care of things, public schools can’t compete with that,” Sacramento High football coach Justin Reber said. “The good schools can, but the schools like Burbank, Valley and Florin and the lower-level schools, that’s where everything starts falling apart.”

It’s certainly been a challenge at Burbank.

The south Sacramento school has an old nickname, “The blood bank,” that just won’t go away, Elder said, even though Burbank has a solid International Baccalaureate program.

“It’s just way less drama than what people are accustomed to hearing,” Elder said.

The local football players stay away, some because they are recruited to play elsewhere. Elder recounted working as an assistant at West Campus, which stopped playing football after the 2016 season.

Elder remembered a large West Campus football player who got a knock on his door from a Capital Christian coach to ask if he wanted to change schools.

“There’s a lot of schools doing it,” Elder said. “It’s even some small schools doing it. I feel like if damn near everybody’s doing it, I’m gonna say near 80% of schools are doing it.”

Transfer Rules

Students in California are allowed to attend any high school, thanks to open enrollment. Under state and local rules, however, students are discouraged from transferring for athletic reasons.

The California Interscholastic Federation oversees all sports in the state, with the Sac-Joaquin Section acting as the local governing body.

But the Sac-Joaquin Section doesn’t make the rules. All the schools that are members of the section have a voice in rulemaking, with principals and athletic directors voting on any changes.

In the Sac-Joaquin Section, student athletes must sit out half of a regular season if the section rules they switched schools for athletic purposes. If they transfer again for athletic purposes, the student must sit out for at least 12 months.

But there are ways around those rules.

The primary way, according to coaches from various sports, is for families to choose a new school before the student starts high school. It would be pretty unusual for a student just entering high school to face a penalty from the section for a transfer, coaches said.

What really irks coaches is students transferring after they have started high school. But a family can easily claim a move to a wealthier high school is motivated by academics because more-affluent high schools typically have better programs than poorer schools. The music program at Folsom High School even has a booster program, for instance.

Couldn’t the section do something about the transfers?

Not really, Reber said. He has coached football at various schools around the Sacramento area for the last decade. Reber said one student left his Sacramento High program for a private school and the only way anyone could protest would be if the kid who transferred became disgruntled and provided evidence that he was recruited to leave.

“What it comes down to is the accountability of the schools. The CIF is trusting the schools,” Reber said. “... The CIF can’t do anything because it’s all hearsay and nobody can prove anything.”

Enforcing the rules

Will DeBoard, the assistant commissioner at the Sac-Joaquin Section, says 2,200 to 2,400 transfer a year.

The section has an online portal, open to the public, that allows people to look up students by last name and high school and see who transferred from where and why.

A search of 2019 records found Folsom had 35 transfers into the school that went through the approval process with the section. Burbank had 10 such transfers into the school.

DeBoard is not a proponent of kids switching schools for athletic reasons. They can get noticed by college recruiters in many other ways.

“The club stuff and the outside organizations, there are a lot of sports where that’s where you get noticed,” he said. “Go do that. That’s your business, and play for your high school where your friends are and have fun.”

But that’s not what’s happening, DeBoard acknowledged. That puts the pressure on the section to play referee on who can play where. Mostly, DeBoard said, schools play by the rules.

“We have the majority of our schools, they don’t want to go down the road of having a transfer cleared and find out there was undue influence or pre-enrollment contact. So it’s in their best interest to discover if there’s anything there. And most of our schools do a very good job,” he said.

But sometimes schools need a point guard or a quarterback, DeBoard said, and they try to sneak in a kid who can help out. “Well guess what, every neighbor school knows what the kid’s club connection was and they tell us. ... The factual stuff gets caught the vast majority of the time. But it’s usually caught beforehand.”

Of course, it doesn’t always work that way.

Letting kids transfer

Franklin basketball coach Ken Manfredi has been working in the Elk Grove Unified School District for the better part of two decades.

When he first started coaching basketball, Manfredi used to get worked up about kids leaving to play for a different school. Sheldon High School is a powerhouse in the district and draws high-quality players such as Marcus Bagley, who’s now playing at Arizona State.

Manfredi or any coach losing a player to another school could raise a ruckus. They could protest a student’s transfer to a different school. But there’s no point, Manfredi said. The student likely isn’t going to play for his team even if the challenge is successful.

Plus, Manfredi and other coaches agree, good athletic programs don’t need to recruit kids. Everybody knows Folsom and Oak Ridge have good football teams. Everybody knows Sheldon has a great basketball team. They send athletes to Division I colleges every year to play sports. Families see that and they want that for themselves, even if they’re thinking a decade down the line.

“If you’re on social media, you see it,” Sacramento’s Reber said. “Parents think their 6-year-old is getting recruited at a pickup game in Cosumnes River. No one’s watching your kid right now but parents want to post videos and be seen. That’s the world we live in now. Parents want to be in the most competitive program. They think if my kid is in Folsom and he’s the quarterback when he’s 6, and he stays in the Junior Bulldog program, he’s going to be the quarterback for the varsity team. Maybe. But it puts them in a better position, no doubt.”

Still, Elder at Burbank High School wondered how his kids are making it work.

“I hear stories and stuff like that like some schools give out scholarships to students, some give bus tickets and stuff like that. I’m pretty sure there’s some stuff in the works,” he said. “There’s probably some coaches picking kids up, some players picking kids up. I’m not too sure. But something’s going on. I’m sure some kid from south Sac isn’t going all the way to Folsom, Capital Christian, Fair Oaks, just to play football.”

What can be done?

Coaches said the situation isn’t going to change. Parents, in academics and in athletics, want to find the best spot for their kids. Athletics might seem different because there’s a perception of wholesomeness around high school sports; kids should play for the school they’re assigned to, a purist might say.

That’s just not the way it always works.

“It’s very unique too because, ultimately, families are trying to position their children in their most favorable situation, whether it’s athletically or academically,” Manfredi said. “That can get very gray, whereas the old notion is you should go to school where you live. It would be nice to live in a world like that, but I think we can romanticize that view. I don’t think it was that either.”

Only one thing should be done, coaches said. Run a good, winning program that local students will want to play for.

Manfredi has done that with Franklin. His Wildcats won 17 and 19 games in their last two full seasons.

“I have come to peace with the fact that I am a public high school coach,” Manfredi said. “It doesn’t mean I’m OK with all the best talent leaving. I’m not, but that’s not in my control. What’s in my control is how many of my players are outstanding in the classroom, on the court and in the community. How many have a great experience and how many leave ready for college. That’s what I can control.”

At Burbank, Elder is working on that. He’s built up a youth feeder program. He has a nice field and a history of personal success in football.

He says the CIF or the Sac-Joaquin Section could make a statement to stop the outflow of football players from Burbank. But that only goes so far.

“Man, give us a solid. They’re gonna have to start sanctioning schools,” he said. “They can keep trying to make it harder for kids to transfer with rules but at the end of the day there’s always going to be a loophole. The loophole comes from the schools that have the resources to get around the rules. You can make rules but there’s gotta be consequences because the rules aren’t doing it.”

This story was originally published August 29, 2021 at 5:00 AM.