Recruiting Players ...
 

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.

I'm lost about how this has anything to do with recruiting officials.

Players ...
 

Recruiting "players", but didn't you already know that?

It's an officiating site. I see the word recruiting and I assume officials. Why would I think it's about players?

If you would have put players in the title I wouldn't have read it. Good bait and switch there.

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Not Intended ...
 

If you read it you would know it (but we both already knew that, didn't we?).

Bait and switch wasn't intended, but maybe I should have gone into marketing instead of education? Maybe I've got some natural talent for marketing?

https://tse3.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.N...=Api&P=0&h=180

Can't change the title in a thread starter, but I tried.

The days of taking a walk, or a short bus ride, to one's local public high school school and playing sports are long over.

Students (players) now have choices.

Interscholastic sports have to adjust to a new normal.

We'd Love You To Join Us ...
 

"We've got a new auditorium, a new computer lab, now offer Mandarin as a world language, 95% of our graduates get into their first choice college or university, and we have a great basketball program, won the state championship last year, and two of our players got full Division I scholarships."

Illegal recruiting?

As an official, I do not involve myself in matters such as this. Nor do I care about whether or not a player is eligible. I am there to enforce the rules as outlined in the NFHS rule book and supplemented by the case book, with a couple minor modifications as outlined by the state AA.

The debate you are trying to instigate here belongs on your local high school sports forum. Not this forum.

More States ...
 

I already know what's going on, not only in my local area, but also in my state.

Two long time Forum members, one from Northern Virginia, and one from Connecticut, started a two state discussion.

I wanted to see if there were similar issues in any other states.

This is an officiating website and you purposely left out the word "players" in your title to suck others into reading your post, knowing most everybody here would have bypassed it otherwise.

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Wrong ...
 

Absolutely not.

Anybody, including Raymond, after reading only a sentence or two would realize what the topic was about and simply chose not to continue reading.

Also, early on, when notified of such a poor title, I tried to change the title of thread, possible in most posts in a thread, but not possible in the first post of a thread.

Scroll up to my first post and see for yourself. I changed it, it just doesn't show up on the thread list as changed.

I do not, or course, receive any monetary compensation for clicks, nor do I crave any attention for my slightly off topic threads and posts. Sometimes I just like to write. It forces me to organize my thoughts. I started writing during COVID and discovered that I actually like doing it, something that I hated to do in both high school and college. Surprisingly, because I'm not very good at it, I can occasionally make a few bucks as a nonfiction author, mainly on topics of basketball rules and mechanics, Connecticut geology and history (state and local), and Catholic devotions.

Guardians Of The Game ...
 

Now that I've admitted that I accidentally offered too little information on my thread title, is anyone with an interest in interscholastic basketball seeing the same recruiting player problems as seen Connecticut and Northern Virginia in their states?