Why Texas’ high school sports authority sidelined a potential powerhouse

Faith Family Academy, a charter high school in south Dallas' Oak Cliff neighborhood, put together one of the best girls' basketball teams on paper that the state has ever seen.

The school brought in 18 transfers, including some of the best players in the country.

But in late October the UIL , the state's governing body for high school sports, declared that Faith Family would be ineligible for the playoffs this year, and suspended its coaches for two years. This came after the UIL found that the school had committed recruiting violations to put together the girls' basketball team, which school officials have denied.

Greg Riddle, high school sports writer and editor for the Dallas Morning News, spoke to Texas Standard about the prevalence of recruiting violations in high school sports. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

How exactly did Faith Family Academy break these rule, according to the UIL?

Greg Riddle: Faith Family denies that there's any actual evidence to support the claims of recruiting violations. A lot of it, they said, was hearsay.

But I think the fact that there was 18 transfers was a lot of what the UIL was going off of, especially when you bring in that many elite recruits to one school after hiring one of the best basketball coaches in the state.

They said there was a communication on social media between one of the Family assistant coaches and a girl from Lincoln High School who's still at Lincoln. But they cited that as evidence, that they were trying to recruit this girl.

They also presented evidence that a Family assistant coach was at an AAU event where one of her former players from DeSoto was playing and they said she had impermissible contact with that player and gave her like trinkets from Faith Family. And that was another one of the things they cited as evidence, as far as the recruiting violations go.

And like I said, Faith Family has denied that they ever recruited anyone. The UIL, I think, mainly looked at the fact that there are so many transfers coming into one program after Faith Family had no girls basketball transfers come in the previous year. I think that's kind of what led up to all this.

Greg, let me ask you, why is recruiting for athletic teams seen as a no-go in high school sports? Could you say more about that?

The UIL wants a level playing field. And they think if teams are allowed to bring in players and players can transfer for athletic purposes, that schools are going to build super teams and kind of dominate the competition. And so they try to have these rules in place.

It's very hard to govern. They try and do the best they can. But a lot of it's kind of up to the coaches to flag students if they think they're transferring for athletic purposes. And a lot of coaches don't do that.

How common are recruiting violations in Texas high school sports?

I think that you had like less than 50 appeals to the state executive committee last year, which is what happens if the student's found ineligible. The next step is to appeal to the state executive committee.

And so they didn't hear a ton of cases last year, and it's been that way for several years. And it's just a matter of... I mean, coaches aren't flagging these kids even if they think they're transferring for athletic purposes. And so that's why you don't see a lot of cases like this.

Well, what does this mean for the Faith Family's season? Will the girls basketball team play any games at all?

Yes, they're going to play a national schedule. They dropped out of the UIL recently and they joined the Texas Christian Athletic League. And basically what that does is allow them to play a national schedule.

And the coaches who have been suspended by the UIL will be allowed to coach Faith Family because they're just playing a national schedule. And also those 18 transfers will also be able to play all year. They'll just be able to play because the school's no longer in the UIL.

So no other sanctions, from what you can tell?

Yeah, they won't. Because they left UIL, there's nothing else they have to worry about as far as sanctions go.

So in the league, they joined Legion Prep Academy, which also has a lot of the top recruits in our area. Legion Prep was also in TCAL last year. So basically two of the top teams in our area could be playing each other in that league.