MPA eyes improper recruiting practices Accusations prompt examination of rules

Illegal recruiting, improper transfers. It seems as if the issues come up every year.

Those touchy subjects were out in the open during the Eastern Maine Class A girls championship game, when a Nokomis girls basketball fan held up a sign that read “We Don’t Recruit,” directed at Cony of Augusta, whose fans were sitting on the opposite side of the Bangor Auditorium.

Right or wrong, based in gossip or fact, the implication was there.

Those issues will be out in the open again at the end of the month, when the Maine Principals’ Association is scheduled to meet and possibly vote on some rewritten rules regarding schools that recruit students and students who transfer from one school to another.

For the past two years, an ad-hoc MPA committee has been charged with assessing and rewriting the current rules. That committee presented its ideas at the general membership meeting in November, to give the 153 MPA member schools some time to think over the changes. The committee’s proposal will be on the agenda at the April 25-26 meeting in Rockland.

Scarborough High principal Andrew Dolloff, who chairs the committee along with Doug Cummings, the headmaster at Maine Central Institute of Pittsfield, said there were no specific violations that led the MPA, which had heard a “rash of accusations,” to form a committee.

“Football, ice hockey and basketball generate a lot of accusations in transfers and recruiting,” Dolloff said. “Now with the growth and emphasis of girls sports you see it in softball, field hockey and soccer. It’s out there.”

The committee has come up with several changes to the current MPA rules. Under Article III, Section 5 of the MPA eligibility rules, “all member schools shall refrain from recruitment, inducement or other forms of persuasion which would encourage a student to transfer to another school for athletic purposes.”

Dolloff’s committee has added more specific language. For example, a school official can talk to a potential student about the academics, athletics and programs it offers, but cannot talk to a potential student about why one school is better than another.

There have been some complaints raised about schools that advertise, such as Cheverus in Portland, a private boys school, and Catherine McAuley, a private girls school, also in Portland. Both schools run television advertisements in southern Maine to attract students. Dolloff said he has seen both schools’ ads, and he felt both were heavily centered around academics.

“Some schools in the MPA rely on recruiting for their life blood, but they sell the whole school,” he said.

According to Article III, Section 4, current transfer rules are that a student who transfers to another school without a change of address by the student’s parents or legal guardian is eligible unless it is determined the student transferred for athletic purposes, which will be decided by the receiving principal.

The committee will recommend adjusting this policy, which it feels is passive, to a more active policy, in which the transfer student would have to complete a waiver form with the signatures of the principal of the student’s current school and the principal of the receiving school.

“This kind of takes it back to the way it used to be, when the principals had to sign off on a waiver form that the reason for the transfer was not for athletic purposes,” Dolloff said.

Still, Dolloff conceded, it’s hard to tell if a student is truly transferring for academics or athletics. One way to look at it, he said, is to compare the academic and other offerings at the schools. If a student transfers to a school with narrower academic opportunities that the school the student came from, that might raise some suspicion.

Then again, Dolloff added, there are few glaring differences in the schools across the state.

“The discussion is so constant that you almost become immune to it, but looking back there are a lot of kids that I would question why they went to a certain school,” Dolloff said. “People will still be able to slip through the cracks. It’s going to take a principal or two to stand up and say something.”

Roberts out, Bouchard in

Ken Roberts, who has coached, taught and been an administrator at Yarmouth High School for 39 years, will retire at the end of the school year. Taking over his position as athletic director will be former University of Maine basketball star Rachel Bouchard.

Roberts said Bouchard, who is a lawyer in southern Maine, has been working with the forwards and centers on the Yarmouth girls basketball team for three years. When Roberts’ job opened up, she applied and was hired.

Roberts doesn’t have any big retirement plans yet, but he will miss being around the students.

“I’ve been a kid person for 40 years and it’s going to be hard to not be a kid person any more,” said the 63-year-old. “… It’s been fun, exciting and trying at times. I’m proud of how well the teams have done here.”

In his 39 years at the school Roberts has served as a junior varsity basketball coach, varsity soccer coach, athletic director at the high school and middle school for the past 17 years, and math teacher.

From 1973 to 2000 Roberts compiled Heal Point standings for soccer, field hockey, volleyball, ice hockey, baseball, softball, tennis and lacrosse.

Bouchard, a former All-American who ranks second all-time at Maine in career scoring and rebounding, was also a standout at Hall-Dale High of Farmingdale and has been calling Western Maine girls basketball tournament games for Maine Public Broadcasting Corporation. She will start at Yarmouth July 1.

Jessica Bloch’s High School Report is published Tuesdays. She can be reached at 990-8193, 1-800-310-8600 or jbloch@bangordailynews.net.