devin531

SoCalHoops High School & Prep Report

Devin Montgomery To Transfer
From San Fernando To Alemany--(May 31, 1998)

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that Devin Montgomery (6'-0" Jr. G) from San Fernando High who earned All-City Section and All-Valley basketball honors this past season, has applied to transfer to Alemany "under open enrollment." This is not the first transfer for Montgomery, who last season transferred to San Fernando from Ribet Academy in Ventura County, to play for Darryl McDonald, who was his club coach and an assistant at San Fernando High.

If you read this and were as confused as we were, forget it. As far as we know, "open enrollment" has nothing whatsoever to do with this particular transfer. Alemany is not an LAUSD school, but is a private, Catholic church affiliated school, which plays in the Mission League of CIF (along with other private schools such as Harvard-Westlake, Crespi, Loyola, Notre Dame, and St. Francis), and the transfer rule in CIF, as we understand it, is that a player can transfer to any public school within his district under "open enrollment" without incurring any ineligibility. The Los Angeles CIF commissioners, led by Barbara Feige, recently introduced a rule which now restricts transfers within LAUSD schools to once per high school career for other than non-academic reasons (no penalty if the student changes residences and transfers to the school within his resdience), but obviously the City Section of CIF has no authority over Southern Section CIF teams, schools or players. If Montgomery transfers to a private school, indeed any private school, then he's free to do so (provided he is admitted and can deal with the tuition). Indeed, this has always been the "rap" which the private schools have endured with regard to recruiting of players, i.e., they are not restricted by any geographic boundaries and can take players from anywhere, hence the typical accusation that they are "recruiting" unfairly and to the disadvantage of the public schools. To a certain extent, this has been just so much smoke and mirrors, because if you look at who's won the majority of the State Titles in the last 10 years in the major divisions, you'll see that it's mostly Crenshaw and now Westchester. There may be more parity in the lower divisions, where private schools predominate, but at least in Division I, it's mostly LA schools doing the winning. That might change with the new restrictions on open enrollment transfers, but don't count on it.