By Bill Moushey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Andy Starnes/Post-Gazette
Coach J.O. Stright, left, talks with former Yough High School player Ben McCauley during a J.O.T.S practice at Duquesne University in May 2006.
As a coach and general manager of Pittsburgh J.O.T.S. AAU team, one of the leading amateur high school summer basketball squads for 20 years, J.O. Stright has seen transfer issues surrounding many top-notch athletes across the state, becoming personally involved in a few of them.
His answer to the festering problems regarding transfers for material athletic intent is simple: End all transfer rules.
“They don’t work. It’s a joke. It doesn’t make any sense, “he said of the arbitrary nature of the transfer rules — past and future — which he complains rarely get to the truth.
He said there is no doubt that, over the years, students have tried to transfer to follow good coaches and join the best teams, but to his view, just as many moves — star athlete or not — are made because of horrible family situations that force transfers or threaten the well-being of a child.
Taking all of those things into account, he believes the increasing amount of hearings and time entities like the WPIAL spend on transfer issues are a colossal waste of time.
Stright does not dispute that some parents, who want the best high school experience possible for their kids, would do all sorts of things — sometimes even moving into a district — to overcome the present arbitrary transfer rules. That injects another unseemly ingredient in the system, allowing families with money to overcome the rules by moving when poor families cannot.
Stright has been involved intimately in the process dating to the 1980s when he was part of the case of basketball star Danny Fortson, whose transfer from Altoona High School to Shaler Area caused a one-year suspension because the WPIAL and PIAA ruled he moved for material athletic intent.
Stright said the system failed Fortson, who enjoyed a long NBA career after attending the University of Cincinnati, because it never got to the truth, which he said was that Fortson had severe family problems that forced the move.
“They get second-hand information and run with it, “he said.”
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