Team interview notes

Jordan Hill – Coaches on both sides of the transfer situation

Completed Interviews

Athletic directors

Brian DeBerry, Grayson High School

Richard Ricketts, Prince Avenue Christian

Coaches

Jeff Herron, Grayson High School

Jason Tone, Worth County High School

Xarvia Smith, assistant coach, Allatoona High School

Adam Carter, defensive coordinator, Valdosta High School

Christopher Reece, former Oconee County player/Camden County assistant

Greg Slattery, assistant coach, Camden County High School

Stacey Stewart, former Camden County High School assistant

To add

Mark Fleetwood, Peachtree Ridge head coach

Jon Weyher, Peachtree Ridge athletic director

Scott Jackson, Decatur High School head coach

Carter Wilson, Decatur High School athletic director

Historians – The people who write the Georgia High School Football Daily newsletter.

Morgan Ainslie

Sam Hicks, Counselor and former coach at Clarke Central

Emily Giambalvo – personal story of a transfer

Jasen Johnson – interview set up for Saturday morning

Parents and siblings of Jasen Johnson

Chris Griffin – Flowery Branch High School coach (school Jasen transferred from)

Nick Bach – Mountain View High School coach

Emily Greenwood & Chenault – effects of transfers on playing career & academic repercussions

High school players

Dylan Wonnum

Eugene Brown

College players

Isaac Nauta

Staff

Glada Horvat – UGA Athletic advisor / Academic eligibility

Evan Greenberg

In doing some research, there is a lot more to work with with Florida and I think I could have enough to go with just one state.. With that in mind, these are people who have spoken out or about against Florida’s transfer policies. List will grow as I ask who to talk to from these people, but operating from a whole state at the moment and then scaling down.

Hillsborough High School football coach Earl Garcia

Armwood High School football coach Sean Callahan

Denarvise Thornton, Montverde Academy AD (Was) in charge of eligibility with FHSAA until 2015. Montverde’s athletics are great, but they don’t have a football team.

Rick Scott’s office (He passed HB 7029, which will go into effect in 2017 and makes players basically free agents; “High school students who transfer will be immediately eligible to play sports, as long as they don’t play the same sport at two different schools within a school year, the law says.” -Orlando Sentinel

Walt Griffin, Seminole county superintendent

Ashleigh and Nicole

We have gone through and tracked GHSA Constitution changes from 1978-2015. Our main focus will be writing what the changes are and ideally, why they came to be. Our most important interview is Assistant Executive Director of GHSA, Jay Russell, as he is in charge of policy. We are working on infographics to display the changes of policy. We are hoping Mr. Russell can point us in the direction of more interviews because as of now, he is the only one we know directly involved with implementing policy change at the state level.

Glenda and Bryan: Transfers taking spots

Interviewed:

Deion Williams- SWD DB Coach

Will interview:

Fletcher Salter- SWD head coach
Roman Adu
Bryan Lamar- Tucker’s head coach

I plan on using the interviews with the coaches to get the names of players that have transferred or out of their sports program.

Team budget

My part of the team project will focus on the impact on the family of athletes who transfer. This will take an approach that is broader than just the athletic effect for the transfers.

I am interested in considering how often families cite academic reasons or parent career changes if a family moves a long distance away so their kid can go to a different school. If a parent gets a new job in a different state or city, does the family intentionally choose a house in a certain area so the athlete can go to a certain school? Things like buying houses and changing family life are major decisions, and I’m interested to see how uprooting a family becomes justified due to the quest for a scholarship. In Georgia, do football players ever move and live with a host family so they can be on a different team? (This happens a good bit in gymnastics.)

How often do players feel like transferring directly resulted in better athletic performance and tangible positive outcomes, such as college scholarships? Do they consider leaving their old school (with familiar friends and teachers) worth it? Is there any way to quantify this… probably not because we can never know how successful an athlete would have been if he had stayed at his original school.

In order to tell the story from this angle, I will need to talk to the athletes, their parents and their siblings. I also think it could be effective to use a map of some sort to depict how far athletes are commuting or moving in order to attend their new school.

Team Budget

Ashleigh just recently finished going through the GHSA eligibility rules from 1979-2015.

Now that that is done, she and I are going to go through them to see if we notice any patterns.

More specifically, we will be looking for which rules change the most, which rules become more specific overtime, and if rules are added or deleted. Once we have noted the most prevalent of the previously mentioned, we can cross reference it with any athletic “scandals,” for lack of a better term, from the preceding year. That way, we will be able to see if any eligibility scandals directly influence by-law changes.

Furthermore, we can also make some graphs for those rule instances we feel are the most important and or have changed the most over time.

Lastly, we are going to do some research to see which counties/regions get the most transfers, what the transfer’s cited reason is and how strictly GHSA rules are enforced.

Jordan’s Team Project Budget

My piece of the high school transfers team story, along with being the editor of the overall project, will be a profile on Grayson High School football coach Jeff Herron. Herron is a veteran coach in the state and is now in his 27th season as a head coach with his seventh different school in Georgia.

Herron has been what many consider to be the benefactor of the many transfers over the offseason, as his new Rams program had six players transferred. Herron was not hired by the school before these players entered the program, and he offered interesting thoughts on transfers, saying, “Being old-school, I long for days where you stayed at one school your whole life …”

I plan to talk about his experience in the state, if he’s ever seen the rate of transfers higher than it is now, how the transfers have affected his new program, and if he expects to see more and more transfers in the state from here on out. I would also like to talk to other coaches about Herron as one of the well-respected coaches in Georgia and how he fits into the whole transfer mess.

High School Transfers Stories: Questions to Answer

Disconnect between coaches – Jordan

For the veteran coaches in the state, has there ever been an offseason like this one as far as the number of transfers?
Do the comments from some coaches against transfers stem more from emotion than logic?

How valuable can transferring be for extending a playing career/The repercussions academically for doing so – Emily, Chenault

Does transferring in high school correlate with transferring in college?
How does transferring affect graduation rates and/or GPA?
Are high school transfers more likely to go on to play in college? The NFL? Where do they go?

Texas and Florida case studies – Evan

What led to the current policy in place? How did it come about?
Have others reached out to them on a discover-type basis to see how they run things?
Was there any thought given to one based on the other? Did one policy come before the other?
Would there have to be any addendums made based on outlying factors in Georgia if it did adapt a similar policy?
What is the overall thought by those within these states on the effectiveness of the policies?

Academic implications on school for transfers – Alex, Morgan

Do schools have problems reinforcing the importance of academics to transfers?
How common is it for highly prestigious academic schools to bring in transfers?
How much more of a workload do teachers face when transfers join their class? Also, how does it affect the time committed to other students?

Personal stories of transfers and their families – Giambalvo

How often do players and their families cite academic reasons for transferring?
For those transferring to a school a significant distance away — how does this affect the parents’ jobs?
How often do players feel like switching schools directly resulted in better athletic performance and tangible positive outcomes, such as college scholarships? Do they consider leaving their old school (with familiar friends and teachers) worth it?
How do other siblings feel about making the move to a new school?

Stories of players replaced by transfers – Glenda, Bryan

How tempted are these players to subsequently transfer to another school?
Is the team chemistry significantly harmed on a team with several transfers (Ex: Grayson)?

Changing of GHSA rules over time – Ashleigh, Nicole

Which rules had the most revisions?
Were certain rules added because of instances that happened the year(s) before?
How different are today’s rules from 10, 20, and 30 years ago?
How strictly are the rules enforced across the state?