WESTMINSTER, Colo. — Texas and South Carolina have separate leagues for public and private high school athletics. Tennessee has separate playoffs and Alabama uses a 1.35 enrollment multiplier for private schools to make competition more equitable because a higher percentage of student-athletes attend private schools.

These are some of the more extreme solutions taken by high school athletic administrations to solve the issues created when public and private schools compete against each other. It would be an understatement to say high school athletics don't carry the same weight in Colorado that they do in Texas or Alabama. It would also be an understatement to say the public vs. private debate isn't relevant in Colorado. But just how relevant depends on whom you ask.

Competition inequity, recruiting and transfer rules are common arguing points for those whose blood boils over the issue. Results from the 2009 Colorado High School Activities Association Vision Committee Survey of 181 athletic directors reveals a cloudy picture.

The state's transfer rule riles as much furor as any topic, but most administrators seem fine with it. If a student transfers during the summer, that student is ineligible for varsity participation in any sport that he or she participated in during the previous 12 months for the first 50 percent of each season. If a student transfers after the first 15 days of the school year, he or she would be eligible only at the JV level for the remainder of the school year and then 50 percent the next school year until the anniversary date of the transfer, at which point the student could compete on varsity teams.

Almost 73 percent of athletic directors surveyed believe the rule fits the needs of CHSAA. Those who don't believe the rule is adequate seem to think it is too lenient or can be sidestepped if a student makes a bona fide move to the area the school is located. Only 3 percent of athletic directors said the rule is too strict while 75 percent said it is appropriately enforced, and 21 percent said it is not strict enough. On a scale of one to five, with five representing no problem and one a serious problem, nearly 42 percent rated the rule a three, while one and five each received 6.7 percent of the vote.

When asked to identify bylaws that need to be restructured and issues they want discussed at the next All-School Summit, athletic directors mentioned the transfer rule and recruiting more frequently than other issues. Seeking input from all sides of the debate, The Alumni spoke to Bert Borgmann, CHSAA assistant commissioner; Tony Schenbeck, athletic director at private Mullen High School; and Wes Ashley, athletic director and assistant principal at public Denver East High School.

Bert Borgmann, CHSAA assistant commissioner

The Alumni: Do you hear a lot of debate on this topic?

Bert Borgmann: At one point, up until about two years ago, we were hearing a lot about it. And then we had an All-School Summit where we discussed it. We had issues on the table for the entire membership and this was one of them. People talked about it on the floor and we really haven't heard a lot about it since then.

TA: What were the concerns?

BB: Some schools were able to set their enrollment and are able to say no to certain students. At the same time Colorado is a choice state and you see some public schools promoting their test scores and those kinds of things, and not recruiting athletically. We really haven't had any issues with private schools recruiting athletically. Some people didn't think everyone was on the same playing field. After the discussion was on the floor and people talked about it, we really haven't heard a lot about it.

TA: What came from the meeting?

BB: No bylaws were passed. It gave people a chance to hear perspectives from everyone who is involved in the discussion. The reality is that, at least in Colorado, much of what we're discussing might very well be classified as urban vs. rural rather than private vs. public. Most private schools are located in larger metropolitan areas, and if they are a midrange school like they are in Colorado, then they are typically competing against public schools typically located more in the rural areas.

TA: Do you receive a lot of complaints about recruiting?

BB: Every now and then we will get recruiting charges against a school and you would probably get as many against public schools as you do private schools.

TA: What is the process for filing that charge?

BB: You have to provide the details of the situation you are discussing. Who, what, when, why and how. Once we have the opportunity to investigate it, then we ask the parties to sit across the table from each other and they can talk about what the issues are. If any recruiting is found to have occurred, we have substantial penalties. They can run anywhere from banning them from the playoffs to suspension of membership if it ever got to that point.

TA: When have you handed out penalties?

BB: We really haven't. It's very difficult to prove recruiting. Most people will say, ‘These guys are recruiting,' but they don't provide you with the information. It's a difficult task to investigate and come up with a clear-cut, black-and-white answer.

TA: How do you monitor recruiting?

BB: If we hear about anything we discuss it with the school that's involved. We might hear that a school has been accused of recruiting and we call the athletic director at that school and say, ‘We have an issue here that's not reflecting well on your school.' We're like every other state association in that we are a self-reporting association. Your responsibility as a member school is to self-report. If you are breaking the rules we ask you to investigate and we ask you to come back with a report on it and then we will proceed from there.

TA: Have you ever considered separate leagues or a multiplier?

BB: We've actually had private school membership in the high school activities association since the mid-1960s. I think that says a lot that we have been able to last as long as we have with that. With the multiplier, we looked at that at one point just to get a feel. Most private schools can set their enrollment at whatever they want. So if they really wanted to do it for athletic purposes they could say, ‘We really want to be in 3A, so we're going to set our enrollment to stay in 3A.' But, what do you do with Mullen and Regis, who are in the highest classification? The vast majority of our private schools haven't been the most successful athletic schools. So putting a multiplier on them forces them into a higher classification, when they weren't even successful in their lower classification. So there is a lot of uncertainty anytime you start to look that direction.

TA: Do you feel the debate will gain steam?

BB: I'm not anticipating a lot of discussion in that direction. Part of our luxury is that we are a small state with 330 schools. We don't have that many large private schools. It's one of those issues where you want to make sure you're always having conversations and that people feel like they are being heard on issues that affect them.

Tony Schenbeck, athletic director, Mullen High School

The Alumni: Do you hear a lot of debate about the public vs. private issue?

Tony Schenbeck: We're a school of virtually 1,000 students and the only league that would let us in was the Centennial League, which is a 5A league, and we are a 4A school. The schools in our league are all much, much larger than we are in terms of student population. Yes, we get an awful lot of guff because in a lot of our sports, we stay and play in the playoffs in 4A, which is actually what we are number-wise. In football, baseball, boys basketball, girls soccer, boys and girls lacrosse, we play up at the 5A level. We are constantly accused of recruiting athletes and CHSAA, I think, watches us very closely. I watch my coaches very closely because we don't need them out encouraging kids to come to our school. We've had a good athletic program, which has the opportunity to attract students. So it attracts students and yes, some of the other schools - none of the schools in our league - accuse us of being able to go out and get the athletes we want. It costs $9,000 a year in tuition to come here. We have an aid fund in which all of our students may apply for tuition assistance. We do not have a student here that is on 100 percent aid. We have maybe 20 percent of our students who get some kind of financial aid and they get that by applying for assistance.

TA: Has CHSAA ever investigated your school for recruiting?

TS: I've been here the last 10 years and during that time CHSAA has never come in to check us on an accusation of recruitment.

TA: How do you monitor your coaches to make sure they are not recruiting?

TS: You don't think that there aren't a thousand other coaches out there watching our coaches to make sure there isn't anything going on? I can't tell you that I have 100 percent proof that I never had a coach who talked to an athlete. It happens at so many other schools. I will hear a rumor of somebody calling and saying, ‘We know that your particular coach talked to so and so at a Little League athletic game.' When I talk to my coaches about it they say, ‘We were just one of many coaches there. There were coaches from this school and that school.' I have had students that have told me that individuals from other schools have talked to them about coming over there. So I think that most schools are trying to attract the best students they can. We try to monitor and make sure our coaches are not talking to other students, but it's something that is going on with more than just the private schools. I'm sure that Regis and Kent Denver and Colorado Academy and Holy Family would tell you the very same thing.

TA: Do you think it needs to be more closely regulated?

TS: The only way you regulate that is if a student is willing to come forward and say that has happened to them. I think CHSAA does the very best job they can, but until a student just flat comes forward and says, ‘This person approached me and tried to get me to come to their school,' that's the only way that you're going to be able to monitor that. We might have parents at other schools that are telling kids, ‘Come to our school. I'd like you to be on the same team my son is.' There's open enrollment out there all over the place. Public schools have open enrollment the same way we do. I hear as many stories about kids being recruited by public schools as I do about kids being talked to by private schools.

TA: What is your view on open enrollment?

TS: I hate it. I wish that kids would just go to their neighborhood schools and play at their neighborhood schools. I don't like it when kids transfer here. We have kids that will come here as freshmen and pay their tuition and work their tails off to be a Mullen student, and those are the students that we need to be loyal to. We want our kids to be loyal to us. Of course, by the time that happens you get a student who wants to transfer in because he's had problems at another school and doesn't get along with a coach or whatever. He transfers in and our coaches want him to play for them. It makes it a difficult balance.

TA: What is your view on the transfer rule?

TS: When I was first an athletic director, and I have been doing it for 30 years now, if you transferred to a school without a family move you sat for one year. You didn't play JV, you didn't participate at all. You sat for a year. I was fine with that. You didn't have many transfers at that point. I know that CHSAA gets tired of being taken to court and it becomes an expensive thing, but now you get kids that transfer all over for various reasons. They can transfer into a school and play on the junior varsity. They sit for 50 percent of the scheduled games and then they play at the varsity level. I don't think that's severe enough, but you try to get it more severe and all of the sudden you're in court.

TA: Do you see competition inequity between public and private schools?

TS: In terms of us having better athletes or them having better athletes, I've been an athletic director at a public school - I was at Overland for 20 years - and I would notice that the more students we got, the more good athletes we got. We're blessed with some good athletes here at Mullen and the other thing we are blessed with are athletes who absolutely work themselves. When you know that you're going to pay $9,000, they want something for that $9,000, and they're not going to put their son or daughter here if their son or daughter isn't willing to spend the time in the offseason and in the weight room. Our kids are extremely, extremely committed to their sports. When I was an athletic director at a public school, I noticed my coaches running as many out-of-season camps and being as much of the 365-days-a-year type of coach, and I notice that with our kids and coaches here.

TA: Have you considered separate leagues or playoffs for public and private schools?

TS: If you aren't a member of CHSAA, then you can't play their high schools. So if you were going to be in strictly a private school league, the whole league would have to a part of the association or you couldn't play other schools. We can't go out and play club teams and other organizations that are not a member of CHSAA. In some states they have a separate Catholic league or private school league, and I would hate to see that come to Colorado.

TA: What are some steps to help eliminate recruiting?

TS: As long as I have been involved in education, and this is my 43rd year, it has been the same debate year after year. I really don't know that there are a lot of steps. Trust and integrity - that's about the only way to pursue it. I don't think you're going to be able to legislate ethics so that everybody feels that everything is totally fair.

Wes Ashley, athletic director and assistant principal, Denver East High School

The Alumni: What are the major issues for athletic competition between public and private schools?

Wes Ashley: The recruiting of athletes from public schools to private schools. Everybody knows that as public schools, all we can do is offer a good program. We can't offer a scholarship, and that's where equity comes in. They say you can't recruit kids, but to us it's recruiting if you offer a kid a scholarship. How they get around it is by offering an academic scholarship or a financial needs scholarship. That's fine, but where you find out that it's not really based on academics and that it's based on athletics is when you have a student-athlete who happens to be a star running back gets a full-ride scholarship to Mullen - or some place like that - [and] they don't take the rest of the family members. The little brother and sister who might not be as athletically inclined, they're not getting a scholarship to go to that school. How can you call it a financial needs scholarship if you're not taking care of the whole family?

TA: Do you feel the competition is becoming less balanced in recent years?

WA: Let's take, for example, the two state championship teams from basketball last year. They were both from Regis. Obviously Regis can offer more than anyone else can offer. I think there's a little bit of a change in some of that this year, not so much in the scholarships, but we've been enrolling kids in the last few days and I have talked to more people from the private schools like Colorado Academy, Regis, Kent that are actually coming back to public school. These weren't scholarship kids, these were kids who were going there because their parents could afford it, but now with the financial crisis that the state's in, and their parents lost their 401K, they're actually coming back to the public schools because they can't afford the private schools anymore. With the recruiting thing, a lot of people feel there is an inequity there. It's very unfair that you can offer kids [a scholarship] and they steal your best athletes from the inner city.

TA: What is the solution to recruiting since it's so hard to prove?

WA: I'm not the only one who feels this way, but make the private schools and the public schools have two different state leagues. Let the Mullens and the Regises have their own state championship and let the public schools have their state championship.

TA: How do athletes get around the transfer rule?

WA: All it says is you have to have a bona fide move. I know some examples of some great basketball players who have moved three times in their high school career all in suburban schools and their parents had the money to go out and rent or buy them a house to live in while they maintain their same residence in Boulder. Their parents took us [CHSAA] to court and they have more money than we do. The court sided with them because their parents own a house right there and they can play. Inner-city kids or kids that don't have the means to go out and buy a residence can't get around it by having their parents go and lease out a place.

TA: Is that very common?

WA: Yeah, very common. It's a pain in the butt for athletic directors. I almost cringe when school begins because I know that, especially when you have a high-profile team, you are going to attract high-profile players, so for instance, my coach came in this year and said, ‘We've got two kids from Texas and one from Mullen coming in to play basketball.' That means I have to do paperwork, follow up on them, and do house visits to make sure they are actually living where they say there are. I have to send paperwork to their former schools.

TA: What is your view on open enrollment?

WA: Open enrollment has its merits. You should have the right to send your kid to the best school you can find as long as it's academically based. I just don't care for it when people use it for athletics, to move their kids around. We're fortunate here at East because I think we're the number one choice school in Colorado. We end up having more kids than we can allow in to the school. We have to put a cap on it with 200 to 300 kids waiting trying to get in.

TA: How has your job changed as this has become a bigger issue?

WA: I just have to do more paperwork. Every time you change your transfer rule there's 100 people out there trying to figure out how to circumvent it. If you don't follow up on everything, if someone slips through, then it's all on you and you jeopardize your program and put it on probation because you missed something or the parents lied to you and said, ‘We're living here.' Last year I started going to athletes' houses and knocking on the door to make sure a parent answered and the kid was there because I had a problem a few years ago with a transfer from Eagle Crest who CHSAA said didn't live in our attendance area and never made a move. He was one of their star basketball players, so Eagle Crest told CHSAA he never made a move and made some accusations that there might have been some recruiting. I had to go down to CHSAA with all the documentation to prove that he lived in Denver, where the parents worked, and it wasn't a pleasant experience. So now when I get these high-profile players I go knock on their door with a witness to verify they were there.

TA: How plausible would separate leagues be in the near future?

WA: It's probably not likely because our rules are state controlled through CHSAA. It takes a movement of legislation for this stuff to happen. The problem with CHSAA rules is that if it is a major rule like the transfer rule, it usually happens because some legislator's nephew or son or daughter didn't get to play somewhere for some reason so they introduce some legislation and everyone votes on it and that's how rules come about. I don't see any major change going on in the next five years.

TA: What does CHSAA need to do to get better control on the situation?

WA: I really don't know. The fact is we are CHSAA because it represents all the athletic directors of all the high schools. Until people get totally fed up with it I don't think anything is going to happen.

TA: Are both sides upset about the situation?

WA: Private schools never complain about it. They love it, and why shouldn't they? They're able to build programs with the best athletes in the state.

TA: What is most important for people to know about the public vs. private debate?

WA: Just that the playing field is not equal. It hasn't been for some time. Someone needs to step up and say either there are no scholarships if they come on their own free will or call it what it is - athletically motivated transfers.