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Texas high school coaches call for UIL rule changes amid staggering number of transfers

“We fully intend to bring some changes to the process,” UIL deputy director Jamey Harrison said when talking about the transfer rules.

As many as 15,000 athletes could transfer to Texas high schools this school year, either changing schools within the state or moving in from out of state, the University Interscholastic League estimates.

The UIL, which governs public school extracurriculars in Texas, prohibits students from transferring for athletic purposes, but at that number, coaches say there’s an increased risk of schools being able to create “super teams.” Especially given that the UIL said less than 1% of all transfers were ruled ineligible last year.

Why This Story Matters
A staggering number of Texas high school athletes are transferring schools, creating the potential for “super teams” that could make people feel less connected to the teams in their community. The issue is prominent as the high school football season starts this week.

For the first time in decades, the UIL is ready to do something about it. But it may not be the dramatic change that many are calling for.

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UIL deputy director Jamey Harrison said last week that adjustments are coming to long-standing rules that have been in place since 1981.

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“We fully intend to bring some changes to the process,” Harrison told The Dallas Morning News. “This isn’t necessarily changing eligibility rules, but tweaks to the process for applying those rules. We fully intend to bring those to the legislative council at the October meeting.”

Harrison’s comments come as the high school football season starts this week and at a time when coaches are questioning the UIL’s ability to police transfers and challenging the fairness of local district executive committees and the UIL’s state executive committee. Coaches say that social media, camps and skill-specific coaches make it easier for athletes to be recruited and become “free agents” who end up at the top programs.

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There is also clamor that charter schools have an unfair advantage over traditional public schools. Coaches are particularly upset that UIL charter school Oak Cliff Faith Family has added at least six high-profile girls basketball recruits as transfers since four-time state champion Andrea Robinson took over as head coach about four months ago.

“When charter schools came into the UIL, I think there was a lot of concern,” said Joe Martin, executive director of the Texas High School Coaches Association. “The things that they can do versus the things that public schools can do are a little bit different. The concern that we have is just how equitable is it?”

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Former Mansfield Timberview girls basketball coach Kit Kyle Martin said the UIL needs to act with urgency to maintain competitive equity.

“The integrity of Texas high school athletics is really on the line,” said Martin, who retired after leading her team to a state runner-up finish in Class 5A last season. “Something has to happen. You are going to have super teams and then the rest of it. At the rate it’s going, it’s going to happen quickly.”

Suggested changes

Most of the coaches who responded to a survey from The News said different rules are needed. One possible solution would be to get rid of the district-level committees and form regional committees of impartial and retired coaches to hear cases involving transfers. Coaches have also suggested having a district committee rule on another district’s transfers instead of its own, or having each DEC rule on transfers from a different classification.

Just over half of the coaches said the UIL should go back to the pre-1981 rule that made every transfer automatically sit out varsity athletics for one year, no matter the reason for changing schools.

Legendary football coach Todd Dodge, who is in first year at Lovejoy, is a cautionary tale for why that might not work today, considering how frequently families move for jobs or other opportunities. More than four decades ago, it didn’t work for him. Dodge was a Parade All-American quarterback at Port Arthur Thomas Jefferson but almost spent his final two years of high school at Longview.

“It was legit as it comes,” said Dodge, who won seven state titles while coaching Southlake Carroll and Austin Westlake. “My dad, a preacher, was getting transferred, and we were moving from a parsonage in Port Arthur to another parsonage in Longview. I was not moving for athletic purposes.”

Rather than sit out varsity football for a year, Dodge stayed in Port Arthur and led his team to a state runner-up finish as a senior in 1980.

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“My family left me in Port Arthur, and I had a family take guardianship of me,” he said.

How transfers work today

A transfer’s varsity eligibility is now tied to a Previous Athletic Participation Form (PAPF), a two-page document that includes six yes or no questions pertaining to why they left their old school and whether they were recruited.

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If a coach or administrator at their previous school checks a box on the form that indicates they think the student transferred for athletic purposes, the district executive committee holds a hearing. If ruled ineligible, the athlete can appeal to the UIL state executive committee.

Even if the PAPF is clean, someone in the new district that the athlete is transferring into can also request a DEC hearing if evidence or red flags exist.

The number of PAPFs growing to as many as 15,000 is partly the result of a transient society, population growth and the opening of new schools in a state where 859,301 students participated in high school athletics last year, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. But coaches say high school athletes are acting as if there is a transfer portal, like the one authorized for college sports.

“The UIL does not do a good job with all these transfers,” Mansfield Legacy football coach Jeff Hulme said. “I don’t believe they should have to automatically sit out a year, but I do believe that way too many athletes are transferring. It’s what they see the college athletes doing, so they figure it must be the right thing to do.”

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While the UIL supports DECs because they are the closest to the situation and the most informed, coaches say too much is left up to the members, and that without a neutral third party deciding the outcome, eligibility rulings don’t always reflect the facts of the case. In 2015, The News reported that the UIL had discussed creating an “eligibility clearinghouse” at the state level, but that it didn’t have the budget for it and didn’t want to take away local control from the schools.

Coaches also argue that having DECs made up of schools in the transferring athlete’s new district is a conflict of interest. These schools would have to compete against the student for playoff spots, and it could make schools fear retribution if they vote against other schools’ athletes in hearings.

“I feel like the transfer process is breaking down at the DEC level,” Plano football coach Cody White said. “Many multischool districts will not vote against each other, so you get this ‘free agent’ mentality in selected spots. I am thoroughly disappointed in how much we are seeing transfers for clearly athletic purposes. I think it should be automatic for someone to sit out.”

Harrison said the district superintendent or someone he or she designates represents each school on a DEC, and it’s almost exclusively the superintendent in 3A and below, and often in 4A. It could also be the high school principal, but some coaches say the athletic director or head coach understands the case best and should be the one voting.

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“I think the DEC is flawed,” Anna football coach Seth Parr said. “If the athletic director or people in athletics are not in the district executive committees, then we have principals that don’t know the UIL rules or don’t know this stuff, making the decision.”

Highland Park football coach Randy Allen said the way DEC meetings are run can create problems if a school is represented by someone outside of athletics.

“The hard thing is you haven’t heard the parents’ reasoning [for moving] prior to going in, and a lot of times there is no conversation, no background information for the administrator,” he said. “Usually, the only one who has an insight is the coach from where the student moved from. A lot of times there is not enough time between the information being presented and the vote to talk and get feedback from the coach of the school.”

The school receiving the transfer is responsible for doing a thorough investigation to make sure the DEC has the facts of a case, which often requires coaches to visit the family’s home and verify proof of address and other information.

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“The person that is responsible for it is the head coach,” North Crowley football coach Ray Gates said, “so If you get a kid who moves in and he is not where he is supposed to be, and you did not do a home visit ... ultimately that can come back and bite you.”

Harrison emphasized that very few transfers are ruled ineligible. Of the 15,000 PAPFs the UIL handled last year, only 45 students appealed a DEC’s decision to the UIL, and 38 were denied.

“Those who are new to a high school, 99.75% got through the process just fine. That is a remarkable percentage,” Harrison said.

The DEC vote is critical, because those rulings are difficult to get overturned. The last four school years, the state executive committee heard 197 appeals and denied 85% of them (167).

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The numbers behind the transfers

Athletes who transfer tend to end up at schools that are successful, no matter their reason for moving. Over the last three years, the UIL processed a combined 509 PAPF forms for all sports for South Oak Cliff (180), DeSoto (138), Duncanville (114) and Anna (77), according to information obtained through an open records request.

Those were the four Dallas-area schools that played in a UIL football state championship game last season. Those same schools added perhaps the four best football players who transferred from one D-FW school to another during the offseason.

Three-star quarterback and Virginia Tech pledge Kelden Ryan moved from Fort Worth All Saints to DeSoto; first-team MaxPreps sophomore All-American wide receiver Trenton Yancey went from Arlington Lamar to Duncanville; four-star Baylor pledge Kamauryn Morgan will be playing defensive line for South Oak Cliff after leaving Red Oak; and Anna added the area’s second-ranked cornerback when three-star SMU pledge Zay Gentry left McKinney.

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DeSoto also added two elite transfers from out of state — linebacker/edge rusher DJ Rumph (offers from Michigan and Georgia) and four-star sophomore running back/linebacker Myson Johnson-Cook, who is now the No. 2-ranked player in Texas in the Class of 2027.

Besides Morgan, six other players ranked among the top 50 recruits in Texas in the Class of 2025 have transferred to schools that are in the preseason state rankings, including Denton Guyer four-star quarterback Kevin Sperry, an Oklahoma pledge who is at his third high school in three years. And four-star running back Riley Wormley, committed to USC, transferred from Colleyville Heritage to eight-time state champion Southlake Carroll last year and was initially ruled to have transferred for athletic purposes before the UIL state executive committee overturned that and declared him eligible.

Ryan, Yancey, Morgan, Gentry, Johnson-Cook and Sperry have all been cleared for varsity play. Rumph is just waiting on some paperwork.

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In 2018, a News investigation found that 74 football players — including 30 from out of state — transferred to five-time state champion Allen in a five-year period. Allen, the state’s largest school, gained 34 move-ins for football for the 2017-18 school year, a season in which it went 16-0 and won its fourth state championship in six years.

Through a public records request, The News obtained PAPFs from Duncanville showing that 37 football players and 16 girls basketball players — not all varsity athletes — have transferred there from high schools or middle schools outside the school district since June 1, 2021. Duncanville has won back-to-back Class 6A Division I state titles in football, and its girls basketball team won state last season.

Most of the more than 100 total transfers into Duncanville went unchallenged. On only four of those PAPFs did a coach or administrator from the previous school mark that they thought the student transferred for athletic purposes.

The vast majority of transfers go uncontested, which can be the biggest flaw in the system. Some coaches told The News that they have never flagged an athlete for transferring because they would rather the athlete just leave if they don’t want to be there.

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“When you see something that is obvious, you have to step up,” said DeSoto football coach and athletic director Claude Mathis. “We as coaches have to do our job. We have to check that box [on the PAPF] if we feel like somebody has left for athletic reasons. If you check the box, it starts the process, and that is when the UIL can step in and it gets to the DEC.”

This summer, SMU football coach Rhett Lashlee talked about how he is fed up with the staggering number of transfers in high school athletics. He used Florida — a state with more lax transfer rules — as an example of what can happen when schools start building superpower teams that aren’t homegrown.

Last year’s nine football state championship games drew a total of 18,138 fans, the Florida High School Athletic Association said. Texas had 193,776 fans for its 10 UIL 11-man state finals, a massive difference in community support.

Lashlee doesn’t want to see that fandom disappear in Texas, which had about 8,500 more transfers than were reported in Florida last year.

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“Kids move so much, and there is no more connection to your hometown team. There is no more loyalty there,” Lashlee said at the Texas High School Coaches Association’s convention and coaching school. “There has still got to be something to you grow up and you play in your hometown. That is one of the things that makes high school sports the best.”

More from this series

Texas high school coaches call for UIL rule changes amid staggering number of transfers

UIL has been a mainstay in the Texas high school landscape since 1910. How does it work?

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With a school like Jesuit competing in UIL, why is the organization separate from TAPPS?

Faith Family basketball causing stir about charter schools in UIL: ‘It’s a free for all’

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