“It’s definitely not fair. A high school is definitely a place where high schoolers, whether they play for club sports or not, should have a fun place to be able to go and have fun,” said senior, Caden Wells. Playing against a team with players recruited solely for athletics is both illegal and unfair.

While recruiting may seem unfair to high school athletes, there are laws in place to limit and monitor the recruiting process. “The state of Tennessee, the TSSAA sanctioning body has bylaws on recruiting and that they try to put those out there and they are there to try to ensure that the rules are followed,” said Tom Densford, St. George’s Athletic Director. These rules are there to make sure that players that are recruited for a school are being treated like the other students, so these recruits still have to be students before athletes and must meet academic requirements to play just like every other student-athlete. One of these laws is the recruiting law, which states that Athletic recruiting is prohibited, and all athletes must be treated like a normal student.

“If a student wants to transfer it should be up to them and their family not because a school sought them out,” said Wesley Goodwin.

Even with these laws, some schools might have more success recruiting people than other schools do, but it is not truly unfair unless the recruiting is done illegally. “If there is a student at another school that was brought there illegally that it puts other teams at a disadvantage, and that’s why we have the rules that we do,” said Tom Densford. 

Recruiting players for sports teams in high school is legal but can bring up questions about whether or not the rules were followed by the school and whether or not it is really fairly done.