Bottom line Office of Catholic Education in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia is an absolute embarrassment at this point. The amount of these outrageous situations that never get addressed just points to have far down the slippery slope this has now gone. Conwell Egan did same thing in football. Top administration at HS level is inept and a total fangless joke and has been for years. Have been numerous transfers that come in, compete in a sport, never pay tuition and disappear. It happens at ALL these schools. It's a total farce and disgrace at this point.
While it's a joke that the PIAA is as incompetent as it is as any type of governing body the real blame here is not with them. The blame falls squarely on people of authority in the archdiocese, the individual schools, and the individual teams. First the archdiocese has done nothing to establish any guidelines and rules within the PCL that member schools can abide by. So then it falls to the individual schools. The schools are changing presidents like most people change underwear (7 new ones this year alone) and most of these new people are business people with only two goals. Raise money and increase enrollment. By any means possible.
Because of this these presidents use no common sense in situations like this. They take a kid and make them immediately eligible because it might help them win games, championships and in their minds help with the raise money and increase enrollment mandates they need to meet to keep their jobs. Then when the kids they take game the system, end up never paying tuition and the school falls into arrears with the Archdiocese because fund raising doesn't go as well as needed we change the underwear again (ie president gets fired) and we look for the next Pied Piper. No coincidence that 7 new presidents are in. See above. It's a joke.
Finally if you are a HS coach how about practicing a little of what you preach. Expect kids to have offseason commitment to program, talk about binding as a family, lessons about sports as metaphor of life etc ,etc. You can never say it's about more than winning games when you make a maneuver like this. Can't say it's about kids. It's about you. It's about you wining games. It's about you winning championships. It's about you not having the integrity to say I'm not going to take a player 30 games into the season because it isn't right, it isn't fair to both my kids and the other kids who have worked so hard.
If the president says you have to take the kid, you only have one choice. You say then I've coached my last game here because integrity and ethics are on your side and explain to your kids that if you did anything else everything you taught them was hypocritical. Amazing to me a president, AD and coach can look at each other and say yes this seems remotely reasonable. Zero perspective and integrity from adults.
Before anyone says I'm a Catholic hater, I'm a dyed in the wool Catholic League guy. 40 years deep. 19 years of Catholic education. Years of dedicated time to the sports causes. This kills me that something I have felt so strongly about can me this morally bankrupt and irretrievably broken.
