Normally I like to use this space to talk about things happening in our town and what local athletes are up to. But when I started doing research on Braden River football to write this week’s Game of the Week feature, I couldn’t help but feel for one of their players.
I’ve got to break from tradition this week because I believe Knowledge McDaniel should be able to suit up and play against Plant City on Friday night, but he can’t. He can’t play in his last playoff series as a high school athlete because he didn’t want to leave the school he’s called home since he was a freshman.
I get that rules are rules and they should be followed where applicable, but not every rule makes sense. I’ve been a critic of the FHSAA’s updated transfer policies from the jump, as they allow athletes to go wherever they want for whatever reason they want and basically enable lowkey recruiting efforts. It’s created a free-for-all, just as I thought it would, but I didn’t think the FHSAA would feel the need to punish someone for staying with a school when its rules allow for a kid to play in a spring game for one school and end up playing for a different school in just two to three months.
Then they found out McDaniel was staying with the president of the school’s booster club. On the surface, that should ring alarm bells: I can’t even begin to tell you how many stories I’ve heard about kids moving from one district to another to stay with boosters or coaches of top-tier programs just to have that coveted roster spot rather than stay with a team that won’t make a playoff run. But deeper digging revealed McDaniel wasn’t trying to cheat the system like that — he was trying to stay at his high school of three years so he wouldn’t have to spend his senior year elsewhere. His grandmother had gotten evicted from her home, so McDaniel had to choose between a transfer for the most important year of his high school career or to do whatever he could to stay put. It just so happened that a BRHS booster was willing to take him in for the year.
I guarantee you McDaniel wasn’t just thinking about football when he made his choice. I would know.
My parents built a second home while I was in high school with the intention to flip it and make some money, but ended up stuck with the place when the housing bubble burst. The plan then shifted to putting both homes on the market and seeing which sold first, then moving if we had to. The home we were living in at the time was the one we were able to sell, forcing us to move into another school district. I was about to start my senior year of high school and, had I not changed my address to my grandmother’s, I would have had to transfer. I made the drive from Lakeland to Eagle Lake five days a week and spent much of the money I earned working at Firehouse Subs on gas. I was often a few minutes late to first period and got my fair share of stern talks from my teacher, but I wasn’t stressing about someone who didn’t care about my commute through Lakeland’s traffic. I was the new kid in town just four years earlier, so it was way better than having to go through all that again at another new school.
Doesn’t it look like the FHSAA is punishing a kid for choosing not to go to a new school when everyone else is doing it? I can’t blame McDaniel for choosing to stay at his school where he had already planted roots. I would support any Plant City, Durant or Strawberry Crest student’s decision to stay at their school whether they go about it like McDaniel did or like I did.
The FHSAA already needs to start thinking about making new amendments now that a winless Gadsden County team made the playoffs based on points and winning a coin flip against another sub-.500 team. Is it asking too much to also consider not punishing kids for trying to stay put?