GHSA set to tighten up transfer rules, tables complicated reclassification proposal
By Michael A. Lough
The Sports Report
centralgasports@gmail.com
The kind of action many have been waiting for in the regular transfer debate in the Georgia High School Association is on the verge of being taken.
The state’s unofficial high school transfer portal is likely to get tougher, and soon.
The GHSA’s Board of Trustees approved last week a slew of new rules regarding transfers and eligibility, which will be voted on again by the board in July. Constitutional moves by the board must be approved twice. The vote was 11-1 last week, with Class AA representative Brian Montgomery of the DeKalb County School District.
The board is made up of a representative from each classification, as well as four at-large members, the GHSA president and vice president, for a total of 13 members.
The addendum to the agenda for that June 4 meeting that dealt with transfer rules covered 16 pages. Read it here.
A notable new rule allows an athlete one bona fide transfers from grades 9-12 without automatically sitting out, but there will be a year of ineligibility with the second transfer attempt.
Auburn head men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl took the old rule to task in March when he complained that player Dylan Cardwell was ineligible for his senior year in 2020 at McEachern, after playing at Evans in Augusta as a freshman, then Oak Hill Academy – known as an athletics-first institution - in Virginia for two seasons.
The GHSA cited its normal rule regarding bona-fide moves in declaring him ineligible.
High school athletes now regularly all but shun the rule by publicly declaring their transfer or intent to transfer, almost always for athletic purposes.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution cited a few high-profile examples of that, including an interview earlier this year with LaDamion Guyton transferring from Savannah Christian to Benedictine so he could go “against better competition”, as he said in an interview with the Savannah Morning News.
Central Georgia has had some transfers – noted by the player on social media – for what turned out to be academic ineligibility reasons. One attended a media day in one county but had transferred to another area school in less than a week. And some area public high schools have earned solid reputations as transfer portal-type destinations.
While the perception is that transferring is a private-school issue, scores of public schools and staffers do a share of inquiring about transfers and working out details.
All decisions are open to appeal. Executive director Tim Scott told the AJC that about two-thirds of the hardship appeals filed in 2024-25 were approved. Three appeals are allowed.
Among the new rules:
· Parents and guardians will be forced to provide several assorted pages of documentation of proof for a variety of things:
· A drivers license, lease/rental agreements, and utility bills at the new address to confirm a move;
· Utilities at the former residence must be disconnected;
· Rental/lease agreements must be officially terminated;
· The names of both parents must be on the birth certificate of a student moving from one parents’ residence to another’s in a different zone;
The AJC -Constitution quoted executive director Tim Scott as stating that 5,916 GHSA athletes out of 462,492 were transfers in 2024-25.
“We’re an education-based organization, and we want to make sure that when student-athletes move, they’re not moving for athletic purposes,” Scott told the AJC. “Situations change, and families move due to job changes or whatever, so we’ve added a few things to make sure it’s not just for athletics.”