ROBBINSVILLE — Watch out NCAA, the NJSIAA has its own transfer portal.
Kim Degraw-Cole, assistant director of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association, revealed at Wednesday’s Executive Committee meeting that the organization is now using a computer database to track the procedure of student-athletes transferring.
The system, called “Home Campus,” is utilized by a handful of other states, including California, Florida and North Carolina. It went online in New Jersey on Sept. 1.
The hope is that this can streamline the process of athlete transfers and allow the NJSIAA to weigh in on every situation.
The issue of high school athletes transferring, derisively referred to in some circles as “high school free agency” plagues every state in America. Its impact is impossible to discern, but it has sullied the institution as a whole.
Just about anyone connected to North Jersey high school athletics can tell you a story of a kid who has transferred and the various ways parents and students circumvent the rule to have to sit out 30 days.
At the end of last school year, the NJSIAA enacted some new stipulations to its “bona fide change of address” rule. Those include the student-athlete providing an affidavit confirming the move and setting a deadline for when the request must be made.
While the deadline was waived for the fall, Degraw-Cole said that any application for a transfer to be eligible this winter has to be filed by Oct. 1. If it comes later to Home Campus, the player must sit.
“That’s probably one of the biggest changes,” she said. “We are about education and we want the kids to be educated in the school system they are in and not move about.”
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