LEXINGTON — Kentucky’s high schools voted down proposals that would have made it easier for athletes to change schools and keep playing.

The KHSAA Delegate Assembly took up 13 proposals at the Central Bank Center on Thursday. Nine passed. Every one that failed would have loosened a rule.

Each of the 234 member schools sent one delegate. It took two-thirds of them, or 156 votes, to pass a proposal. Two of the four that failed still got more yes votes than no votes.

Transfers have gone up every year, and the Board of Control has spent years looking at ways to cut the paperwork that comes with them. Three of Thursday’s four losses were part of that effort.

None of it is final. Thursday’s votes are a recommendation. The Board of Control can follow them or ignore them when it decides what to send to the Kentucky Board of Education. It meets Nov. 12.

One Free Transfer

A proposal to give every athlete one free transfer before August 1 of their sophomore year lost 70-145.

Any student who played varsity as a freshman could have moved once with no penalty. There was no limit on where they could go.

Supporters said ninth-grade placement is usually a parent’s decision, made before anyone knows if the school is a good fit, and that one move should be allowed. The majority of athletic administrators saw it as opening the door to illegal recruiting and undue influence after opposing coaches got to see the talent of the player.

Team vs. Individual Sports

The closest vote of the day would have made the transfer rule more narrow.

Bylaw 6 now applies to any student who has played a varsity sport. The proposal would have limited it to baseball, basketball, football, lacrosse, soccer, softball and volleyball. Swimmers, wrestlers, runners, golfers and tennis players could have changed schools without losing eligibility.

It failed 131-88, 25 votes short.

The proposal would have created two sets of rules. A basketball player who moved would sit out. A tennis player who moved would not. State titles in swimming, track, and wrestling are decided by individual finishes. However, an athlete changing schools can still decide the overall team championship, which is decided by a complication of individual results.

The Board of Control said schools told them the transfer problem is mostly a team sport problem, and mostly in a few sports. The change also would have cut a large share of the transfer paperwork that athletic directors and the KHSAA office handle each year.

Transferring Back Home

This proposal failed 122-96. It would have let a student who started high school outside their home district move back once before August 1 of their junior year and play right away.

It was narrow. The only school a student could move to was the one the district already assigned them. Any move after August 1 would fall under the standard transfer rule. The idea was that a student going back to their assigned school is not looking for a better team.

The rule change could have let a new freshman leave the district, play two years somewhere else, then come back with no penalty as a junior. In districts with more than one high school, the school a student is assigned to can also change when boundaries change.

Middle School Transfers

Delegates voted 188-29 to close a gap in Bylaw 6. A student below ninth grade who plays at the varsity level and then changes schools will lose eligibility for the rest of that year, unless the move meets an exception such as a change in residence, a change in custody or bullying. The penalty does not follow the student into ninth grade.

The Board of Control said that without a rule, those students can move at any point in a season with nothing to stop them.

Schools also voted 208-13 to penalize in-season transfers in grades 9-12. A student who changes schools after a season has started will lose eligibility in that sport for one year, unless the move meets one of the same exceptions.

This rule was in response to when George Rogers Clark had a top middle school talent transfer mid-season, where she played for two teams in the same season with no oversight on the transfer process.

Lacrosse and Club Teams

The biggest loss of the day, 39-175, was the only proposal the Board of Control did not write.

Highlands High School principal John Darnell asked schools to be allowed to play club teams in sports the KHSAA has sponsored for less than five years. Every player on the club team would have to come from a school that does not offer the sport. The club teams could not play in the postseason or win KHSAA awards.

Darnell used lacrosse as his example. About 40 Kentucky schools offer it. Highlands does not. Its players compete on a club team made up of students from several schools and drive to the Cincinnati area for games. Some quit instead. Darnell wrote that the plan was not a way for students cut from a high school team to keep playing.

Club teams do not go through the KHSAA system that certifies coaches and checks eligibility. Member schools would have to assume that those rules were followed.

The Rest of the Changes

The widest margin of the day, 221-5, went to imposing a deadline on paperwork. A student’s old school will now have five business days to respond when a transfer is being processed, stretched to 15 days if the request comes at the end of the school year.

Two dealt with recruiting. Schools voted 218-2 to make a student ineligible at any school that provides them an improper benefit. They voted 213-8 to define a booster as anyone who supports, promotes, finances or otherwise helps an athletic program, language Bylaw 16 did not have before.

Delegates voted 218-4 to line up the paperwork for a bona fide change of residence with the pupil personnel rules districts already follow. By 210-5, they rewrote part of Bylaw 6 so that a finding that a transfer was athletically motivated no longer depends on whether the student qualifies for an exception.

They voted 188-27 to limit the minimal participation exception to one use after a student enrolls in ninth grade. Under the current rule, a student who barely played can transfer without penalty, and there is no cap on how often.

By 192-31, schools cleared themselves to schedule regular season games against members of the Kentucky Christian Athletic Association and the Kentucky Christian School Athletic Association.