The Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association’s mission, as published on its website reads: “The OSSAA will serve member schools by providing leadership in the development, supervision, and conduct of cocurricular activities, which enrich the educational experiences of high school students. It will provide for equitable participation opportunities and positive recognition to students as a whole, while working cooperatively with schoolstoenhancetheachievement of desired educational goals.”
Those words are polished, idealistic — and hollow. When an organization waves the banner of “equitable participation opportunities” while simultaneously punishing kids for following the rules, it ceases to be a servant of students and becomes a bureaucracy protecting itself. That is where OSSAA finds itself today, with Rule 24 at the center of the storm.
Rule 24, commonly known as the “linked rule,” is a regulation that sidelines students who attend a camp run by a school or coach within a year of transferring. In theory, it’s designed to prevent recruiting. In practice, it is a blunt instrument that punishes families making lawful choices for their children. This is not speculation — it’s what just happened to Glencoe Public Schools, Coach Garrett Schubert, and four studentathletes who transferred after attending a May basketball camp. These students and their families followed the process set out by both state law and OSSAA’s own advisories. When the transfer portal opened in June, they filed the paperwork exactly as directed. Yet OSSAA turned around and declared them ineligible, citing Rule 24.
That might sound like business as usual, but here’s where the hypocrisy rises to the surface. In September 2024, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond issued a ceaseand- desist against OSSAA’s enforcement of Rule 24. He rightfully called it “heavy-handed,” “arbitrary,” and inconsistent with the state’s open-transfer law. He warned that the rule “lends itself for arbitrary and capricious enforcement.” OSSAA backed down, at least temporarily and paused enforcement of Rule 24. For a time, families could breathe easier.
But out of nowhere, the association has snapped Rule 24 back into place — with no public explanation, no clear action taken to reinstate the rule and zero acknowledgement of the Attorney General’s directive. The Glencoe ruling is the first time, that we know of, OSSAA has wielded this discredited rule since Drummond’s cease-and-desist. The board deliberately chose to defy the state’s top legal officer, reverting to a policy he declared unlawful. And they did it at the expense of high school kids whose only “crime” was picking a school and coach they trusted and by jumping through every hoop OSSAA held in front of them to apply for the transfer.
That is not leadership. That is not cooperative governance. And it is the opposite of “equitable participation.”
What the members of OSSAA’s governing board has demonstrated is that it cannot be trusted with the power it wields. Its 12 members — mostly superintendents — is a system designed by insiders, for insiders, and the losers are always the kids left sitting in the bleachers instead of competing on the field of play.
If OSSAA’s mission statement means anything at all, this structure cannot stand. A board elected only by superintendents has proven it will always protect the status quo. Real reform must start with dismantling that ruling board and rebuilding it from the ground up. A new board should be chosen by a democratic vote of all administrators, certified coaches and faculty sponsors of band, choir, and other activities OSSAA oversees — from all Oklahoma schools — the people closest to students, families, and classrooms. Board members should serve staggered two-year terms, so there is change and new insight every year. Only then can the association truly claim to represent the schools and students it governs.
Anything less will be lipstick on a broken pig. Rule 24 will continue to be twisted to fit whatever narrative the board needs to fulfill at the time. Families will still be punished for daring to exercise school choice. Students will still be reduced to pawns in a bureaucracy that values hierarchy over fairness. And OSSAA’s soaring mission statement will remain nothing but empty words, mocking the very kids it claims to serve.
This isn’t just about Glencoe. It’s about every student in Oklahoma who dreams of competing — whether on the field in sports, in the Academic Bowl, on stage in Music contests, through Speech & Debate, performing in a One-Act Play, or even in the world of eSports — students who who work hard, who follow the rules, and who deserve a fair shake. Those dreams are too important to be left in the hands of an unelected, unaccountable clique of power brokers.
If OSSAA’s board will not reform itself, then it is time for legislators, parents, coaches, and administrators to force that change. The choice is simple: keep a broken system that crushes opportunity, or build a new one that finally lives up to its mission.
Oklahoma’s kids deserve better. And they deserve it now.