penncapital-star.com
Absolutely should happen. I think it’s hilarious all of the private school people who claim that all is fine and no recruiting goes on.Leveling the playing field: Why some want PIAA to separate private and public schools in playoffs • Pennsylvania Capital-Star
Critics claim that non-public schools have a competitive edge over public schools in the PIAA because their athlete pools are not confined to school district borders.
We have a friend who lives in Blue Bell whose son goes to "The Prep". It's an hour commute. Plenty of South Jersey kids attend too- it's much closer for them.
Ironically the PIAA decided to go after Aliquippa in order to level the playing field. What a sham.Leveling the playing field: Why some want PIAA to separate private and public schools in playoffs • Pennsylvania Capital-Star
Critics claim that non-public schools have a competitive edge over public schools in the PIAA because their athlete pools are not confined to school district borders.
IIRC, about ten years ago the WPIAL set up separate playoffs but were sued and lost. Then the PIAA started a system requiring schools that win repeated championships to move up in classification as half hearted attempt to quiet the public schools.
I think the public schools should simply all refuse to play the privates. Problem solved. The competition disparity is causing injuries. I suppose if a few players with concussions from playing a private school that recruits sue the PIAA, they may change their minds.
Just shows how out of touch the PIAA is. No one transfers into Aliquippa to live there unless one of their parents or their guardian lives there. And mostly it's kids that have parents living apart that move to live between their two parents. No one "comutes" to go to school at Aliquippa like they do to private schools. I was hoping Aliquippa would go to court to get to 1A where their actual enrollment puts them. They chose to move to 3 A. Yes, a sham.
Yep, let St Joes and a couple more go play IMG and see how they do.
He is somewhat correct. The kids that play there live there. Some live with a grandparent or two. Some live with older sibling, uncle, aunt, cousin……
You ever been to aliquippa? He’s 100% correct.
AAU season is like a waiver wire. My team is routinely gutted by private schools and some public schools. I don’t coach in PIAA country, but I guarantee some of your better public schools are doing the same thing when it comes to recruiting.
Sure SOME do, but ALL privates do. I had a private school basketball coach stop my best player in the handshake line dozens of times. My favorite time though was when my public school team lost to Dematha in the summer league by 3 and their coaches cornered the parents of my PG to convince him to transfer. Thankfully Seth Greenberg was there recruiting and told the parents that obviously I’m doing something right if we took them down to the wire and he didn’t need to go to Dematha to be a D1 player.
While Aliquippa is a public school, transfers are as big a factor with them as some private schools. Just this year, 7 football players transferred in. The Pittsburgh city league doesn't play good football and some of their best players transfer to Aliquippa to win and get looks from college coaches. Aliquippa dresses numbers way above average for their enrollment with 300# linemen and multiple D1 prospects. The results speak for themselves.
And I’m sure many of them have an “address” that lets them play there, that doesn’t make it legit.
Yeah, it just magically happens that every baby born there is a great football player. Please.
They do it in other sports as well…my son was recruited more by other public schools than he was by private schools.
Not all private schools do. In fact, most don’t. Unfortunately the big athletic factories make it look bad for all the other private schools.
Aliquippa is a run down dump of a former steel town. But football is a tradition there which accounts for most of the participation rates. Their players play both ways like all small enrollment schools do. And if there were players from city schools transferring there for athletic reasons (I.e. with no parent or grandparents living there) they would be ineligible due to WPIAL transfer rules, which do not apply exactly the same to enrollment at private schools.
C conference private schools recruit here in MD and teh small privates in PA even come down in to MD to get kids.
I know the feeling. Had a very good sophomore who no one knew about at the start of the season. In a district playoff game that we won, 5 private school coaches were waiting for him to come out of our locker room to recruit him. He went to one that was 45 grand a year. Playing D1 currently.
Yeah…a small public school that dominates every year in one particular sport is recruiting. Otherwise it’s not possible. The numbers don’t add up. In small schools that don’t recruit, you have years where you have a talented crop of students and years where you don’t. It’s just how things work. Either that or God has decided that every male infant born there will be great at football and I doubt that’s happened.
And where I grew up in PA, out of all the private schools only one of them recruited, so we all have our anecdotal arguments. Most private schools are far more concerned with academics than athletics (like where I went to school).
So your answer is no, you have no evidence only feelings.
In my experience as a retired educator, when public schools were suspected of recruiting in PA, the transfers were usually initiated by by the athletes family and they either moved to the new district or the athlete moved in with extended family in the new district. In such cases the PAIA lost their case in court.
The parent or parents do move there, sometimes living in projects. You say some of the 7 transfers didn't play, but the 7 I'm talking about will be in their 1st season this coming fall.
So kids move there to play football…that’s what I’m saying…how is that any different than a kid going to a private school to get better opportunities in life?
So you know of 7 that were 8th graders last season? Did they come from split parents, going to live with grandparents due to unfuntional parent homes,....?
Because they are living with family members which is 100% legal and by the rules. They are almost always coming from nearby districts and escaping bad situations.
I’m sure not all kids moving there are escaping bad situations just like not all kids going to private school are wealthy kids. How’s the non-football playing transfer rate or do only football players have bad home lives?
What part of PA because I’ve coached in both the Pittsburgh area and the Harrisburg area and every private in both of those districts recruits big time. And them don’t even bring up the philly area, it’s hard core recruiting over there
No one said all. Don’t play that game,
You’re NOT sure. Just throwing darts hoping one will at least hit a target….
You do realize that a ton of private schools are small Christian schools that hardly have any sports at all or small Catholic schools that can barely get enough players to fill a roster? My high school didn’t even have a football team because we didn’t have enough players or enough money. The school has grown since then and they finally got a team, but I promise you they don’t recruit in any sport.
From my experiences, those are the ones that recruit the most. they don’t have a football team so they can exhaust all of their resources towards basketball. Just tell us already what school you’re talking about in PA since you’re the only person who defends the private schools every time we talk about this.
