By Stephen Smoot
Three years ago, the West Virginia State legislature passed an act that allowed for open transfers between schools without student-athletes losing a year of eligibility.
Ever since, that act has received criticism for the impact it made on high school athletic programs.
Prior to the act, the West Virginia Secondary Schools Activities Commission had authority to create and oversee rules regarding transfers of student-athletes. A 2023 Legislative act allowed students to transfer once during their tenure in high school without losing a year of eligibility.
Donnie Kopp, who won a state title in basketball at Washington Irving High School and last year coached a Pendleton County girls team to the state tournament, stated in January that “I grew up playing in the 70s and it was old school. If you don’t play in your school district, you simply don’t play.”
He added “you should never place sports above doing the right thing.”
What Kopp refers to as “the right thing” was taken up by Wayne Ryan, executive director of the WVSSAC. He explained to WSAZ news that “we’ve got schools that are struggling to maintain certain programs in certain sports.” A number of football squads had to cancel their seasons. Although a team technically only requires 11, safety requires that football have more players than that.
Ryan described how the transfer rule disrupted normal competitive balances. He explained that mercy rules had to be revamped because of increasingly lopsided results.
“We had 303 games shortened last year in high school football, some of them because of a 42-point margin.”
While shortened games minimize the scoring gap, they also penalize younger and less experienced players who normally would get opportunities in such games.
Ed Smolder, head coach of Winfield High School’s football team, told WSAZ that the previous rules “never created the chaos or . . . the negative culture I’ve seen in the last three years amongst high school sports.”
Ryan spoke to the negative culture, telling West Virginia Public Broadcasting that “we’ve got schools against schools and we’ve hurt relations. We’ve hurt coach to coach relations, administrator to administrator relations, and community to community.”
The question of open transfers goes to the heart of the meaning and purpose of high school sports, especially in a rural and sparsely populated state where many communities follow their fortunes intently.
Delegate Kathie Hess Crouse (R-Putnam) opposed the repeal. From the school choice point of view, individual student-athletes, and non athlete students as well should have the freedom to move schools. School choice advocates in this sense emphasize that open transfers encourage schools to work harder to meet student and parent needs.
She was quoted by WSAZ, saying “our students need to have the opportunity that if a school is not meeting their needs, no matter what those needs are, they should be able to transfer to another school.”
Jay Hesse, Frankfort High School athletic director, emphasized the importance of the teams and players to community to the State Senate. “School and community pride is built when students grow up in a program and represent the school and community they’ve always called home.”
He added “whenever old people like me get together and say ‘hey, this freshman is pretty good.’ That’s what high school sports should be all about.”
State Senator Rollan Roberts praised the move as an example that the State Legislature can “come back and fix it,” but warned that the body expected the WVSSAC to take up improving the rules on their own to provide “wiggle room in these areas” as opposed to a blanket policy.
“Repeal takes us back there, but you should not take us back there,” he told WV Public Broadcasting, “we don’t want to repeat history with that.”
