One year. That should solve just about everything.
Make transfers, with the exception of extreme circumstances such as school closings or the elimination of a sport at the school they’re coming from, ineligible to compete for PIAA high school varsity sports teams for one calendar year from the day they enroll at their new schools.
Period.
That would keep all the questions, all the nonsensical theories and all the various ambiguous interpretations from sprouting like so many unsightly mushrooms after a rainstorm whenever an athlete the caliber of Alex Meade meanders from southwestern Virginia to central Delaware to northeast Pennsylvania in a span of two months.
Too bad Meade’s plight has suddenly become the symbol for all that is wrong with the transfer system in Pennsylvania, because he had nothing to do with starting this and he’s probably one heck of a nice kid. Everyone already knows what kind of a wrestler he is.
That, of course, is a big part of the problem. Everyone knows.
When a kid who wins the outstanding wrestler award at the Delaware state championship meet as a freshman goes from Caesar Rodney High School in Dover, Del., to Christiansburg, Va. — a stone’s throw from the North Carolina border — then heads back to Caesar Rodney for a spell before transferring to Easton, it raises red flags.
Maybe if all three programs didn’t happen to be ranked among the top 40 in the country, Meade’s connect-the-dots journey up and down the East Coast might not have drawn so much publicity. But they are, hence more red flags.
I know the folks at Easton aren’t particularly interested in what I have to say right now, given the fact many of them are blaming The Express-Times for Meade being declared ineligible for the rest of the season at Thursday’s hearing conducted by the PIAA District 11 Committee. But some free advice for the Meade camp is being offered here anyway: Don’t go poking this thing with a stick by appealing it to higher authorities.
If Easton decides to take its case to Mechanicsburg, it will need to know this: The PIAA’s board of directors may well take a much closer look at the facts in this case — facts that won’t help the Meade family’s cause one bit and may lead to harsher sanctions.
The fact is Easton’s extremely weak case fails on so many levels that it would be laughable if it wasn’t so darned sad. You didn’t have to be sitting in on Thursday’s private meeting to come to that conclusion. The 12-0 vote against making Meade eligible said it all.
While coach Steve Powell and his supporters do have a valid point that transfers move all over the Valley and state for obvious athletic reasons every year without any resistance, this situation is unique and so much more complex than the others.
First, Meade has come in from out of state in the middle of a season. Second, the state he came from already ruled him ineligible. Third, he tried to go to another state and also was ruled ineligible at the school there.
Then, only after seemingly being out of options when their appeal to the DIAA was rejected following Meade’s return to Caesar Rodney, his family came to Easton.
Putting all those facts together almost certainly will lead the PIAA Board of Directors to conclude that the District 11 Committee wasn’t stern enough when it ruled Meade ineligible for only the rest of the season, and it could make Meade ineligible for a full calendar year from the day (Jan. 6, 2006) he enrolled at Easton.
Regardless how this plays out, the time has come for the PIAA to look seriously into adopting a one-year athletic ineligibility rule for transfers.
This certainly wouldn’t satisfy everyone, especially the legitimate cases. But it also certainly would be better than the maddeningly complicated criteria the state has in place now for determining eligibility.
More importantly, it would go a long way toward abolishing the de facto system of wrestling free agency that has spun out of control in the Valley and elsewhere around the state with other sports.
Even if the rule is implemented, most of these problems won’t go away overnight. They will go away in one year, though.
Guaranteed.
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