Transfer Portal Culture has Trickled Down to the Kentucky High School Ranks

The transfer portal phenomenon has created chaotic free agency periods in college athletics. We knew this would happen (to a degree) when the NCAA allowed players to move freely from school to school. In fact, it was considered a significant win for student-athletes who had to sit and wait their turn if they wanted to make a change, while the adults were free to move from one coaching job to the next without any repercussions.

Things can get dicey in the transfer portal, but these are young adults who can make their own decisions and live with the consequences. I’m not so sure that people realized how much this culture shift would trickle down to the teenagers in the high school ranks.

Transferring was Frowned Upon

You probably remember the name Dakotah Euton. He was a basketball prodigy in the state, billed as the next Larry Bird on the AAU circuit by the time he was 12 years old. Billy Gillispie eventually got the Ashland native to commit to Kentucky.

He started his high school career with his righthand man, Chad Jackson, at Rose Hill Christian. It was the same small school O.J. Mayo briefly attended and took to the Sweet 16. When Jackson and Euton transferred to Scott County, it was a big damn deal.

Those two were my contemporaries, so I was only privy to the whispers and not the formal talking points. But a few decades ago, the Toyota plant in Georgetown was Scott County’s key to getting the best players from around the state to play for the Cardinals. Their parents got a job on the line and the Scott County basketball team got ball-players. They were reviled by many, but hey, it worked.

The Kentucky High School Transfer Portal Numbers are Staggering

That’s how things used to work. It was an archaic way to operate. Now, the pendulum has swung in the complete opposite direction, and players can come and go freely from school to school.

At today’s Board of Control meeting, commissioner Julian Tackett said the KHSAA has formally processed 827 transfers during this 2024-25 year. Jason Frakes reports that the number only includes the transfers the KHSAA had to rule on. Many others were handled at the local level. That means roughly 1,000 high school athletes transferred schools in a 6-month period.

That number is unfathomable.

How many kids did you know that transferred when you were in high school? Sure, there were kids who got kicked out of a school for getting in trouble and had to move, but how many people do you know switched schools by choice? You can probably count that number on one hand.

The transfer portal has made transferring from one high school to the next an acceptable norm. In most of those cases, it’s because of sports. Another school might offer more playing time or a coach who yells less. Do we really want to teach teenagers that when things aren’t going their way that the best decision is to quit and move on?

Transfer portal culture has been in the Florida high school ranks for years. Now it’s becoming acceptable in the state of Kentucky.

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