On Right to Play and transfers: "...it will crush high school sports and everything it stands for."
Q&A interview with a Chicagoland athletic director and coach on legislation moving through Springfield and its impact on high school athletics
We are deep into the month of April and the spring Illinois legislative session. Sports and athletics are a hot topic in Springfield, with two proposed bills on the docket.
Both bills conflict with current Illinois High School Association rules. One proposal already through the House would allow athletes to participate for both their high school and club teams in the same season (HB 3037). Another would loosen transfer restrictions from one school to the next (HB 0473)
I recently spoke with two members of the Glenbrook North High School Athletic Department—Athletic Director John Catalano and boys soccer coach Paul Vignocchi, who spent time as an assistant athletic director (now an associate dean at GBN).
They shared their thoughts on the Right to Play Act, its impact on high school sports, and potential changes regarding the transfer rule.
Both interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
What are your thoughts on the Right to Play Act?
John Catalano: In many, many ways, it will crush high school sports and everything it stands for. It’s for a small minority of kids, a small group. I think what’s happened over the years, for instance, having a two-sport athlete like football and basketball kids. A football and basketball coach can cooperate and figure it out and work what’s best for the kid. They can thrive in those two sports and be successful. I don’t see how a young lady playing volleyball or soccer or basketball and how you’d be able to meld the two. The club sports will divide and put the kid in the middle and the family in the middle of choosing one or the other.
Paul Vignocci: (Right to Play) gives everyone freedom to do what they want when they want. That presents a challenge because of player safety. I think the IHSA has done a great job recognizing player safety and contact and acclimatization. Once you are finished with an athlete, you don’t know what they are going to do when they leave campus. (Right to Play) creates more of an open forum to go play with their other teams and it creates more of an injury risk for the student-athlete.
How often does the conflict occur where an athlete is doing both, high school and club?
Catalano: We get dozens each year. I get requests for kids to play in non-school competitions—tennis, track, golf, gymnastics, bowlers. They come to me and have to complete an online form. It has to be a sanctioned event. It’s usually the higher-end kids. We have a few tennis players (this spring) who are playing out-of-state tournaments. They make sure they let the coach know, and I sit down with each of them and go through everything in a timely fashion. Why is that system broken? It’s working pretty well.
Vignocci: My philosophy is if we have a good player who says, “I want to play at the next level and I really feel like playing for my club will help me get to the next level” I’m not going to argue with that. I let them choose what they want to do and they have to live with those decisions, positive or negative. I’ve had players get recruited and come back (and play high school soccer) and others come back and say they made a mistake and wish they’d played all four years.
Catalano: With (Right to Play) they’ll get to play at their club whenever and however they want to do it. Are they going every weekend (to club) and every third weekend with the high school team? What does that do to education-based athletics? I ask all my coaches, and to a person, they comment that injuries will skyrocket from overuse. It will happen very quickly, where this could decimate softball, girls volleyball, and soccer. Kids and families making a choice and it will hurt them in the pocketbook. Right now, there’s a limit on the number of days and how much school you can miss. Doesn’t it make a difference in how many days they will miss school? How many days are acceptable to miss? There are so many unintended consequences.
Vignocci: The tricky part with Return to Play is how it impacts team dynamics. Tryouts and selecting a team are hard, as it impacts familes and kids and we have to make difficult decisions during the process. Now you have a high school athlete splitting—they have to leave practice early and miss a game as they have to choose one or the other, and it impacts teams. At GBN, when we’ve been successful, it’s not always with the best skill teams, but we come together as a team and work hard together on the field, and we are a family outside the soccer field. That could be impacted as you have kids that don’t have priorities and they are playing with their club team and high school team, and you don’t know what day you get them.
Can you elaborate more on unintended consequences?
Catalano: We did a study a few years ago. It was on the structure of life and how important that is. It wasn’t super scientific, but we compared athletes to non-athletes and their GPAs. We found that kids do better when involved in athletic programs when time is structured and they can manage their time. They are more competitive in terms of grades. They don’t want to be average in that area if they are competitive (in athletics). Why are we dismissing the academic side?
Vignocci: I look at it from a player safety perspective. Baseball is a big one. You don’t know when this person is pitching, and trust the person outside is taking care of his arm or making it an issue. 7v7 football could create more injuries. There has to be time for recovery. We’re allowed to play up to 25 games in (boys) soccer. I don’t play the full amount of games. We don’t play back-to-back unless there’s a weather issue. When you look at the season, you have to be smart about how you practice between games. Our kids could get injured if doing too much, and we do have kids who go to private workouts after high school practice.
Catalano: There will be an immediate impact on the sports that already have a strong club presence—volleyball, soccer, baseball. Swimming will easily be affected. What happens to other individual sports? Golf, what happens? They can play a little bit of both (club and high school). There’s such a small percentage of kids that will eventually benefit. I’m not sure there is a benefit. Some mom or dad says, “My kid played volleyball and played for 12 months but because they played (high school) for three (months), they didn’t get a scholarship?” There’s not a whole lot of logic as to why those months would be inhibiting.
Vignocci: I’d say, in general, there are 10-20% of kids (at GBN) who, in the fall, are doing something else. Speed, agility, and additional training of that nature. They might leave after our practice and go to a soccer training session or training for another sport. Soccer programs in the area that do year-round are FC United and the Soccers. They are connected to the MLS Next program. Other clubs do not do things in the fall, but that doesn’t mean they can’t start and provide something additional to make money. New legislation would allow that to happen.
There is another proposal floating in Springfield that would remove transfer restrictions. How would that impact high school sports?
Catalano: If there are issues, you can already transfer. If you read the basketball preview in Illinois and the top 25 schools, I bet anybody will read about the addition of such and such. If you live here and go to another suburb and have to move anyway, residency rules takes over before athletic rules. We have the ability to transfer, so I don’t know why there needs to be (a law). CPS (Chicago Public Schools) are supposed to oversee its own transfers. I don’t know how well that’s worked out and maybe there hasn’t been enough oversight and (the IHSA) is making adjustments to the extreme.
Vignocci: They allow transfers now if there is bullying or harassment or some extenuating circumstances. If it’s just athletics-related, I don’t agree with it. We’re becoming a society where things are changing so much at the college level and the portal, and this is just one of those things where it’s whatever they want to do. There is a little competitive advantage for Catholic schools that can recruit. I don’t enjoy that process as it makes you not enjoy coaching. Families are more about winning and losing and not the experience.
Catalano: We had a discussion (about Right to Play and transfers) at the CSL (Central Suburban League) meeting. With both of these, the general sentiment is similar to mine in how this will put kids in the middle and force them to make a decision and will decimate those programs. There needs to be regulations and guidelines. We are in a new era with how people are thinking, the flexibility of moving, with remote working. We have laws that haven’t kept up with the times, and we need to look at that closer.
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