Legislation was filed in the off-season in the Va. General Assembly concerning the eligibility of transfer students.

Here’s basically what happened :
The VHSL says a student must sit out of extracurricular activities for one semester after they transfer, unless they get a waiver.
A student was living with his grandmother, who died. He moved in with a new legal guardian, transferred to Osbourn Park, enrolled for the Fall, then played football. OPHS failed to apply for the waiver until after he had played in 4 games (all wins).
The VHSL denied the waiver, OP forfeited it’s wins, then lost their remaining games to finish 0-10.

So, a bill was drawn up by OP‘s local representative and was submitted to both the House and Senate in Va. The bill would change part of the Code of Virginia, forcing the VHSL to basically exempt from the transfer rule those students who have lost their legal guardian.

The Senate bill passed on Feb. 10 by a vote of 37-3. It was then sent to the House, which assigned it to an education sub-committee, which put it on hold until 1999.

Info about this can be found at :

The (Northern Va.) Journal (note: this story ends about half-way down the page - they forgot the separator)
Journal, part 2 , part 3
Senate Bill 424 and House Bill 1316 , which are the same, but have different links.

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Meanwhile, the VHSL Executive Committee changed part of the transfer rule in May in order to try and reduce the number of families that set up a second residence in another school district for the main purpose of the student transferring schools. The amended rule, which took effect July 1, now states : 

  An athlete must now sit out a full academic year instead of a semester, 

  unless the transfer involves a complete move by the family.




  If an athlete's family moves, the original residence must be completely 

  vacated and cannot be rented to a relative. In addition, a player cannot 

  just move in with a non-parental relative and change schools. There must 

  be compelling reasons for that transition.



And W. Va. made a slight modification to their transfer rule over the Summer.


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