Transferring high schools for solely athletic reasons will no longer violate California Interscholastic Federation policy starting in the 2017-18 school year. The CIF passed the new guidelines with a 100-38 vote last Friday.

Despite the rule change, transfers will still be mandated to sit out the first 30 days of the sport they are trying to play.

In the past, however, students could not claim athletics as motivation for a school and if CIF found that the student was actually transferring for athletic reasons when they had listed academic, the student would be suspended for the whole season rather than just 30 days.

Because of the new rule change, students can now list the true motives for their transfer and be protected from further investigation.  

The Sac-Joaquin Section, which houses the Capital Valley Conference and Roseville High School, was one of three sections in the CIF to vote against the transfer rule change. The North Coast and Northern sections also voted against the new rules.

Varsity basketball player junior Joe Cirrincione fears that the new rules will allow student-athletes too much freedom and that they could end up resulting in the decline of fair play and competition, comparing the way future student-athletes might group together at certain schools in order to create strong teams to the formation of “super teams” in the NBA.

“I think that it takes away from the competitiveness of basketball,” Cirrincione said. “I hope that people don’t pull a [Kevin Durant] and create a superteam.”