STATEWIDE--The Indiana High School Athletic Association wants to make it clear that their transfer rules are completely different than the NCAA’s transfer portal.
For the NCAA, new regulations were adopted in 2021 allowing student-athletes in Division I football, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s ice hockey, and baseball to change schools using the portal once without sitting out a year after the transfer. This regulation placed all NCAA sports under the same transfer rules, as the so-called “one-time transfer” rule had long been in place for all other D-I sports, as well as all sports in Divisions II and III.
The biggest emphasis that the IHSAA wants to make is that any transfer cannot be done for primarily athletic reasons.
“The NCAA does a phenomenal job. They have to do what’s best for them, but a transfer portal just doesn’t work for high school sports because every time there’s a transfer for false pretense, there’s a student athlete that loses their opportunity at a team too,” said Commissioner of the IHSAA Paul Neidig.
Niedig says transfers will be granted by the IHSAA as long as the following criteria are met:
-The parents or guardians have not been influenced by any person to secure the student as a member of the school.
-The student is enrolled at the current school for the first time as a 9th grader.
-The student and their parents made a bona fide move to a new district or territory.
There are other criteria that must be met. You can see that on IHSAA.org.
“Athletic directors at our more than 400 member schools can talk them through the process and make sure they are following the rules that are set to promote fair play,” said Neidig.
Neidig says the education of kids in Indiana must never take a backseat to athletics.
“I think the biggest challenge is that make sure that we stay focused on the last person who makes the team. The opportunity to learn in school is just as important for the last person on the bench as it is for the best player on the team,” said Neidig.
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