[BillyMac]

I recently exchanged emails with my Forum friend Justacoach about high school recruiting players problems in his area.

I thought that I would share with all Forum members my most recent email to him about recruiting problems in Connecticut.

Here in Connecticut we’ve had similar problem for many years with our Catholic high schools, they can enroll students from outside the town/city/district.

Now the same problem extends to magnet schools and charter schools that also enroll students from outside the town/city/district.

Now high schools that enroll students from outside city/town (not sure about district) boundaries participate in their own State tournament class (a tournament class with very large, winning public high schools).

The city of Hartford, second largest city in Connecticut, has three public high schools with well defined district boundaries.

Also in the city of Hartford are five Hartford district magnet high schools that enroll students from all over Hartford; and a charter high school and a State technical high school that enroll students from both inside and outside the city of Hartford.

Hartford also has a private school that enrolls students form "anywhere" (private schools are not members of the CIAC)

Towns contiguous to Hartford offer four interdistrict magnet high schools, two Catholic high schools, and two private schools, that enroll students from “anywhere”

Substitute the word “recruit” for “enroll“ and you can see the problem, very difficult to prove.

About thirty years ago we had a very infamous public high school coach fired.

His town had two public high schools.

His public high school was School A, a school with a long time winning basketball tradition (State championships).

The other public high school in the same town was School B, a school with a poor basketball program.

The two public high schools were identical except that School A had a State sponsored vocational agriculture program and offered Latin as a foreign language.

School B offered neither, but students could cross town boundaries to take vocational agriculture, and town district boundaries to take Latin, at School A.

Oddly, many of the players on his successful School A basketball team were enrolled in vocational agriculture and/or Latin.

There were other problems that led to his firing.

Illegal basketball practices in the off season, and “rising” middle school players participating in his illegal off season high school practices.