Athletic Eligibility: Right or Privilege?

School Administrator, Nov, 1998 by Kimberly Reeves

Minimum standards for participation, illegal recruiting and parental pressure combine for administrative migraines

The long list of infractions Berkeley High School's athletics program reported to the California Interscholastic Federation last year was a stunning testament to just how far students will go to participate in competitive sports.

With 32 varsity sports, 1,200 athletes, 96 coaches and 750 competitions each year, Berkeley High School is, by many accounts, the largest high school sports program in the nation, one with a rich history of state and national titles. Joe Martin, an ex-National Football League player who was brought on as Berkeley's athletic director in June 1997, singled out student eligibility as one of two major issues he intended to tackle during his first year on the job. (The other was corporate sponsorship.)

Student eligibility issues perennially bring some of the most severe headaches to coaches and high school principals, sometimes escalating to the level of superintendents and school boards. Most individuals involved in high school sports can identify students who, for one reason or another, should not be participating in athletics. Some may have failing grades; others may claim a false address or complete an illegal transfer to the school. And then there's the unscrupulous coach who will illegally recruit players from other attendance areas or perhaps overseas through foreign-exchange programs (see related story, page 10).

But even Martin, who coached varsity football at Berkeley after a short stint in professional football, was startled by the range and magnitude of student eligibility violations he discovered at the high school at the end of a six-month investigation. In all, Martin reported 45 infractions last January to the CIF, which governs competitive sports statewide. Among the violations was a 20-year-old junior college student enrolled at Berkeley High to play on the varsity football team; three athletes on the water polo team who actually were enrolled in a private school in nearby Oakland; and a teen-age tennis player from Germany with a 100 mile-per-hour serve who spoke no English, never enrolled in the school and spent his summer on the professional tennis circuit.

Martin's own stepson, who played on Berkeley's varsity football team the prior year, was even caught in the net. His family had been given the wrong school transfer form by the previous athletic director--an infraction that initially caused Berkeley to forfeit nine football games at the end of the 1996 season. Martin considered the error an honest mistake.

"What I've learned is that you have to be absolutely conversant in the rules and the bylaws. Otherwise, you jeopardize someone's potential athletic livelihood," says Martin, who brought seven former NFL players with him to coach football at Berkeley High. "You put a lot at risk when you have a premier athlete. Of the 400 athletes we graduate each year, 50 of them probably have full-ride scholarships. You take that 50 [and multiply it] times $200,000 per kid, and we're talking about mistakes that put millions of dollars at risk."

Challenging Authority

The stakes on student eligibility issues are high, but it's not because high school sports programs can claim the depth and on-field success of Berkeley. Only a small percentage of high school athletes qualify for National Collegiate Athletic Association competition at the Division I level, much less a professional sports career.

Many schools districts are faced now, more than ever, with challenges--both legal and legislative--to defend the validity of their student eligibility practices, according to state and national officials. Students and parents are pushing what they see as the absolute right of the student to compete on their school teams.

"You're seeing more challenges across the board to eligibility rules and I think that's typical of a couple of things," says Bob Kanaby, executive director of the National Federation of State High School Associations. "First, I think it represents that we do have more standards in place, and second, I think it shows we have a society that generally has taken a position that standards are to be challenged."

School administrators are finding themselves spending precious time in court and in the statehouse, defending long-established academic eligibility rules for student athletes, as well as ancillary requirements intended to discourage illegal redshirting and recruiting practices. Home schooling, open-enrollment charter schools and foreign-exchange programs provide new fodder for challenges or changes to current state policies on sports participation.

In addition, the NCAA has added a new hurdle by defining the core-course requirements for high school athletes who intend to compete at the Division I level in college during their freshman year. The burden falls on high school principals to certify and document their courses satisfy the NCAA's regimen, but the NCAA retains the right to overrule the school's judgment. (See related story, page 14.)