Facing a threatened revolt within its ranks, the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association has finally taken significant action to address the growing chorus of controversy over athletic transfers.

The governing board approved a postseason ban for athletes transferring as sophomores, juniors or seniors for one year.

To show how serious the PIAA is about the urgency of the transfer issue, it suspended a third reading of the proposed constitutional amendment, which it usually requires for major legislative changes. The new transfer rule is scheduled to take effect on Aug. 6 before the start of the 2018 football season.

The decision prohibits transfers to participate in district and state playoffs and will dovetail with the existing language in the constitution banning athletically motivated transfers.

In April, the PIAA board ruled that any in-season transfer had to sit out three weeks to allow districts to investigate the circumstances surrounding the transfer. It also ruled that an athlete who transferred after a sports season had begun and who competed in at least 50 percent of contests in his or her former school is ineligible to compete at the new school for the remainder of the season.

“The people that maybe this will put the brakes on are those people who will go spend two years at a certain school and all of a sudden somebody needs a 152-pounder or a point guard, or they might need a new pitcher in baseball and they think they can fill that need,” said Dr. Robert Lombardi, executive director of the PIAA.

There are exceptions to the new rule. The postseason ban can be suspended if the athlete can show that the transfer is made necessary by “exceptional and unusual circumstances beyond the reasonable control of the student’s family,” including change of jobs, school- or court-administered transfer, military reassignment or a significant change in income and/or assets that requires withdrawal from a private school.

Changes once permitted for “academic, developmental, spiritual or social reasons” will no longer be allowable as rationale for an athlete’s participation in postseason activity at the new school.

The PIAA will allow district personnel to decide on hardship cases. Our area is part of District 11 whose chairman is Bob Hartman, athletic director at Whitehall High School. He said that when there is a legitimate hardship, schools should be able to do what they have to do to come up with a fair and equitable decision for all concerned.

The PIAA has been under mounting pressure from public schools to put the brakes on the controversial transfers involving private and charter schools that seemingly give them an edge in postseason playoffs. As private and charter schools continue to win a disproportionate number of postseason championships, the clamor for reform of the transfer rules has gotten louder.

For their part, representatives of private and charter schools call the allegations sour grapes.

More than 120 PIAA-affiliated schools are sending representatives to a meeting this week to consider additional ways to “level the playing field” between public and other schools. There has been talk of a revolt against the PIAA if it didn’t take some clear-cut and decisive action to deal with these questionable transfers.

Some area athletic directors have viewed some of these controversial transfers as nothing more than a scheme to bring in “hired guns” to shore up a weak link in a team’s effectiveness going into the postseason playoffs. Some have even accused big-city private and charter schools of trying to recruit players for this nefarious reason. Of course, the PIAA already bans transfers that occur for strictly athletic purposes, but proving this to be the reason for the transfer was previously problematic.

There have been many suggestions about how to address these concerns. Some believe there should be separate playoffs for public and private schools, but this is unlikely; others believe private and charter schools should be banned from PIAA membership, but a 1972 state law indicates that private schools are permitted to be PIAA members so long as they qualify and abide by the organization’s bylaws.

Most of the athletic directors see the PIAA-approved changes as positive moves but also believe more needs to be done. The PIAA’s Lombardi sees this as a big step in addressing some of the bubbling discontent.

“I don’t think it’ll fix it in everybody’s mind, but it’s an attempt to move down the road to try to handle perceived imbalance,” Lombardi said. “I think this is a great move, and if there is imbalance, then let’s address it.”

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com