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Who will stay and who will go? And if they leave, where will they go?
The proverbial door is now open.
By a 67-60 majority vote, the member schools of the New Mexico Activities Association have voted “yes” on a major overhaul of Section 6 of the NMAA’s handbook, which includes the much-discussed one free transfer option for student-athletes in New Mexico.
The NMAA Commission voted 14-1 in favor, and the NMAA Board of Directors voted similarly earlier this month, with a couple of dissents. That left it up to the schools to decide this in a referendum, and the closeness of the vote reflects the polarizing nature of this subject, which includes the possibility that current athletes at a school could be displaced by transfer athletes.
Here’s the bare bones:
Starting with 2026-27, students can transfer without penalty and be immediately eligible at their new school. This applies only to a first transfer. For homeschool and charter school students, regular statutes still apply. Students who attempt a second transfer will be ineligible for varsity competition for a full calendar year, although there are some exceptions.
There will be stringent penalties if the NMAA catches any school recruiting or exerting undue influence to lure a student from one school to another. There could be a huge financial penalty for the offending school (up to $5,000), and loss of eligibility for the athlete in question.
How the NMAA is going to catch, and penalize, those who cross the line is perhaps the largest grey area in regard to the updates in Section 6.
New Mexico follows many other states into these murky transfer waters.
NMAA Executive Director Dusty Young has described this as a “complete overhaul” of eligibility bylaws. The equation has also been fueled by the NMAA’s interest in reducing the number of legal challenges related to an athlete’s eligibility, plus the looming possibility of state lawmakers getting involved.
Earlier this year, a bill filed by Sen. Antonio “Moe” Maestas that proposed to give decision-making power on student-athlete eligibility to the Public Education Department instead of the NMAA, was not heard.
Young said the sweeping changes to Section 6 of the NMAA handbook “reflects the membership’s desire to provide students and families with greater flexibility while maintaining the safeguards that protect the integrity of interscholastic activities.”
A student must transfer before a sport’s official start date in order to be eligible for varsity competition. If they transfer after that date, they’ll be eligible only for sub-varsity action.
Reaction the rule
The NMAA released to the Journal the full list of 157 member schools and each school's individual vote.
Within Albuquerque Public Schools, nine of the 13 voted in favor: Atrisco Heritage, Albuquerque High, Eldorado, Highland, La Cueva, Valley, Manzano, West Mesa and Volcano Vista.
Cibola, Sandia, Rio Grande and Del Norte voted against.
“I just feel like we are not college athletics, and I don’t think we should try and run ourselves like college athletics and let kids move around,” said Sandia Athletic Director Chad Adcox. “One of the big things missing in schools is (a sense of) community, kids knowing they’re going to a certain high school and being proud of that school. … They can already choose where they want to go (with an open enrollment choice), they don’t need another choice on top of that.”
Cibola’s decision was based on other criteria.
“We just didn’t think it would be advantageous for us,” Cibola AD Doug Dorame said. “We’re a small school right now. We border three very large growing high schools — Volcano, Cleveland and Rio Rancho — and we’re already losing kids to those schools. That’s kind of why we voted ‘no.’ ”
Gabriella Duran Blakey, the APS superintendent who is also an NMAA board member, said previously that APS would follow the NMAA’s lead on this bylaw.
The Class 5A division was almost evenly split. Among the 25 schools that play basketball, for example, 13 voted in favor. The other 12 were mostly schools from the southern half of the state, including all four of the Las Cruces schools, plus Carlsbad, Hobbs, Alamogordo and Clovis.
Las Cruces Public Schools Executive Director of Athletics Michelle Ronga said their district would adhere to the NMAA bylaws on eligibility as written prior to this vote. In short, it ain’t gonna be easy to change schools in Las Cruces.
Without a bona fide move into a new district, a student-athlete from Centennial, Organ Mountain, Las Cruces or Mayfield would be unable to participate at the varsity level, Ronga said.
But even this has an asterisk.
Organ Mountain and Centennial are full up, she said, and aren’t accepting any inner-district transfers. Also, the district last year went through a redistricting process to balance the enrollment numbers at the four schools.
“A rule like this would undo that,” Ronga said. Individual districts around the state do have the power to install language that would make it difficult to change schools.
In the Albuquerque metro area, Los Lunas, Valencia and Belen all voted against the proposal. So did Bosque School, East Mountain and Oak Grove Classical Academy.
Among those who voted “yes” were Rio Rancho and Cleveland, plus Bernalillo, Albuquerque Academy, Hope Christian and St. Pius.
“I can see how it will impact schools, I can see how kids might leave and go to somebody else’s programs,” said Moriarty High AD Joe Anaya. Moriarty voted in favor. “I don’t think it’ll affect us directly, but I think it will affect us indirectly. Some of our competition could get better because of it.”
There has been much talk about the fear that transfers will create so-called “super” teams, although there is no way to know yet whether such a thing will occur now that the transfer window is about to open without penalty.
“I think transfers and the current climate of transfers … I think this will help alleviate some of the drama involved with it,” La Cueva Athletic Director and head football coach Brandon Back said. “It seems to be the trend a lot of states are going to, and we’re blessed that Dusty is open to those changes.”
There were over 30 schools statewide that did not cast a vote, including a handful of smaller schools in the metro area, such as Legacy Academy, Cottonwood Classical Prep, Sandia Prep, Native American Community Academy and Menaul. (Menaul’s was a glitch, Athletic Director Gary Boatman said, adding that Menaul did try to cast a vote.)
The large majority of the schools that did not vote were in Class 1A or Class 2A.
In New Mexico cities with multiple large public high schools, they voted in tandem, with the notable exception of Albuquerque.
Las Cruces had four against. Santa Fe and Capital voted in favor, as did Piedra Vista and Farmington, plus West Las Vegas and Robertson, and also Goddard and Roswell.
Los Lunas and Valencia voted against, as did Gallup and Miyamura.
James Yodice covers prep sports for the Journal. You can reach him at [email protected] or via X at @JamesDYodice.
How schools voted
Member schools of the New Mexico Activities Association have voted recently on a major overhaul of Section 6 of the NMAA’s handbook. Here’s how each school cast its vote.
Schools that voted to revise Section 6
*
Academy for Technology and the Classics
*
Albuquerque Academy
*
Albuquerque High School
*
Animas High School
*
Atrisco Heritage Academy
*
Aztec High School
*
Bernalillo High School
*
Bloomfield High School
*
Capital High School
*
Cleveland High School
*
Cloudcroft High School
*
Cobre High School
*
Deming High School
*
Dora High School
*
Eldorado High School
*
Elida High School
*
Escalante High School
*
Farmington High School
*
Floyd High School
*
Fort Sumner High School
*
Gateway Christian High School
*
Goddard High School
*
Highland High School
*
Hondo Valley High School
*
Hope Christian High School
*
Hozho Academy
*
Kirtland Central High School
*
La Cueva High School
*
Lake Arthur High School
*
Loving High School
*
Magdalena High School
*
Manzano High School
*
McCurdy High School
*
Melrose High School
*
Mesa Vista High School
*
Mescalero Apache School
*
Mesilla Valley Christian School
*
Monte del Sol
*
Mora High School
*
Moriarty High School
*
Mountainair High School
*
Newcomb High School
*
Northwest
*
Pecos High School
*
Piedra Vista High School
*
Pine Hill High School
*
Pojoaque High School
*
Portales High School
*
Raton High School
*
Rio Rancho High School
*
Robertson High School
*
Roswell High School
*
Santa Fe High School
*
Santa Rosa High School
*
Shiprock High School
*
Silver High School
*
Socorro High School
*
St. Michael's High School
*
St. Pius X High School
*
Taos High School
*
Texico High School
*
Valley High School
*
Vaughn High School
*
Volcano Vista High School
*
West Las Vegas High School
*
West Mesa High School
*
Zuni High School
Schools that voted against revising Section 6
*
Alamogordo High School
*
Artesia High School
*
Belen High School
*
Bosque School
*
Carlsbad High School
*
Carrizozo High School
*
Centennial High School
*
Chaparral High School
*
Cibola High School
*
Clovis High School
*
Crownpoint High School
*
Cuba High School
*
Del Norte High School
*
Des Moines High School
*
Dulce High School
*
East Mountain High School
*
Española Valley High School
*
Estancia High School
*
Eunice High School
*
Gadsden High School
*
Gallup High School
*
Grady High School
*
Grants High School
*
Hagerman High School
*
Hatch Valley High School
*
Hobbs High School
*
Hot Springs High School
*
Jal High School
*
Laguna Acoma High School
*
Las Cruces High School
*
Logan High School
*
Los Alamos High School
*
Los Lunas High School
*
Lovington High School
*
Maxwell High School
*
Mayfield High School
*
Miyamura High School
*
Mosquero High School
*
Navajo Pine High School
*
Oak Grove Classical Academy
*
Organ Mountain High School
*
Peñasco High School
*
Quemado High School
*
Questa High School
*
Ramah High School
*
Rio Grande High School
*
Roy High School
*
Ruidoso High School
*
Sandia High School
*
Santa Fe Prep
*
Springer High School
*
Tatum High School
*
Thoreau High School
*
Tohatchi High School
*
Tse'Yi'Gai High School
*
Tucumcari High School
*
Tularosa High School
*
Valencia High School
*
Wagon Mound High School
*
Wingate High School
Schools that didn’t vote
*
Alamo Navajo High School
*
Capitan High School
*
Cimarron High School
*
Clayton High School
*
Cliff High School
*
Clovis Christian School
*
Corona High School
*
Coronado High School
*
Cottonwood Classical Prep School
*
Dexter High School
*
House High School
*
Jemez Valley High School
*
Legacy Academy
*
Lordsburg High School
*
Menaul High School
*
Moreno Valley
*
Native American Community Academy
*
Navajo Prep High School
*
NM School for the Blind/Visually Impaired
*
NM School for the Deaf
*
NMMI High School
*
Rehoboth High School
*
Reserve High School
*
San Jon High School
*
Sandia Prep High School
*
Santa Fe Indian School
*
Santa Teresa High School
*
Tierra Encantada
*
To'Hajiilee High School
*
Walatowa Charter High School
Continue reading...
The proverbial door is now open.
By a 67-60 majority vote, the member schools of the New Mexico Activities Association have voted “yes” on a major overhaul of Section 6 of the NMAA’s handbook, which includes the much-discussed one free transfer option for student-athletes in New Mexico.
The NMAA Commission voted 14-1 in favor, and the NMAA Board of Directors voted similarly earlier this month, with a couple of dissents. That left it up to the schools to decide this in a referendum, and the closeness of the vote reflects the polarizing nature of this subject, which includes the possibility that current athletes at a school could be displaced by transfer athletes.
Here’s the bare bones:
Starting with 2026-27, students can transfer without penalty and be immediately eligible at their new school. This applies only to a first transfer. For homeschool and charter school students, regular statutes still apply. Students who attempt a second transfer will be ineligible for varsity competition for a full calendar year, although there are some exceptions.
There will be stringent penalties if the NMAA catches any school recruiting or exerting undue influence to lure a student from one school to another. There could be a huge financial penalty for the offending school (up to $5,000), and loss of eligibility for the athlete in question.
How the NMAA is going to catch, and penalize, those who cross the line is perhaps the largest grey area in regard to the updates in Section 6.
New Mexico follows many other states into these murky transfer waters.
NMAA Executive Director Dusty Young has described this as a “complete overhaul” of eligibility bylaws. The equation has also been fueled by the NMAA’s interest in reducing the number of legal challenges related to an athlete’s eligibility, plus the looming possibility of state lawmakers getting involved.
Earlier this year, a bill filed by Sen. Antonio “Moe” Maestas that proposed to give decision-making power on student-athlete eligibility to the Public Education Department instead of the NMAA, was not heard.
Young said the sweeping changes to Section 6 of the NMAA handbook “reflects the membership’s desire to provide students and families with greater flexibility while maintaining the safeguards that protect the integrity of interscholastic activities.”
A student must transfer before a sport’s official start date in order to be eligible for varsity competition. If they transfer after that date, they’ll be eligible only for sub-varsity action.
Reaction the rule
The NMAA released to the Journal the full list of 157 member schools and each school's individual vote.
Within Albuquerque Public Schools, nine of the 13 voted in favor: Atrisco Heritage, Albuquerque High, Eldorado, Highland, La Cueva, Valley, Manzano, West Mesa and Volcano Vista.
Cibola, Sandia, Rio Grande and Del Norte voted against.
“I just feel like we are not college athletics, and I don’t think we should try and run ourselves like college athletics and let kids move around,” said Sandia Athletic Director Chad Adcox. “One of the big things missing in schools is (a sense of) community, kids knowing they’re going to a certain high school and being proud of that school. … They can already choose where they want to go (with an open enrollment choice), they don’t need another choice on top of that.”
Cibola’s decision was based on other criteria.
“We just didn’t think it would be advantageous for us,” Cibola AD Doug Dorame said. “We’re a small school right now. We border three very large growing high schools — Volcano, Cleveland and Rio Rancho — and we’re already losing kids to those schools. That’s kind of why we voted ‘no.’ ”
Gabriella Duran Blakey, the APS superintendent who is also an NMAA board member, said previously that APS would follow the NMAA’s lead on this bylaw.
The Class 5A division was almost evenly split. Among the 25 schools that play basketball, for example, 13 voted in favor. The other 12 were mostly schools from the southern half of the state, including all four of the Las Cruces schools, plus Carlsbad, Hobbs, Alamogordo and Clovis.
Las Cruces Public Schools Executive Director of Athletics Michelle Ronga said their district would adhere to the NMAA bylaws on eligibility as written prior to this vote. In short, it ain’t gonna be easy to change schools in Las Cruces.
Without a bona fide move into a new district, a student-athlete from Centennial, Organ Mountain, Las Cruces or Mayfield would be unable to participate at the varsity level, Ronga said.
But even this has an asterisk.
Organ Mountain and Centennial are full up, she said, and aren’t accepting any inner-district transfers. Also, the district last year went through a redistricting process to balance the enrollment numbers at the four schools.
“A rule like this would undo that,” Ronga said. Individual districts around the state do have the power to install language that would make it difficult to change schools.
In the Albuquerque metro area, Los Lunas, Valencia and Belen all voted against the proposal. So did Bosque School, East Mountain and Oak Grove Classical Academy.
Among those who voted “yes” were Rio Rancho and Cleveland, plus Bernalillo, Albuquerque Academy, Hope Christian and St. Pius.
“I can see how it will impact schools, I can see how kids might leave and go to somebody else’s programs,” said Moriarty High AD Joe Anaya. Moriarty voted in favor. “I don’t think it’ll affect us directly, but I think it will affect us indirectly. Some of our competition could get better because of it.”
There has been much talk about the fear that transfers will create so-called “super” teams, although there is no way to know yet whether such a thing will occur now that the transfer window is about to open without penalty.
“I think transfers and the current climate of transfers … I think this will help alleviate some of the drama involved with it,” La Cueva Athletic Director and head football coach Brandon Back said. “It seems to be the trend a lot of states are going to, and we’re blessed that Dusty is open to those changes.”
There were over 30 schools statewide that did not cast a vote, including a handful of smaller schools in the metro area, such as Legacy Academy, Cottonwood Classical Prep, Sandia Prep, Native American Community Academy and Menaul. (Menaul’s was a glitch, Athletic Director Gary Boatman said, adding that Menaul did try to cast a vote.)
The large majority of the schools that did not vote were in Class 1A or Class 2A.
In New Mexico cities with multiple large public high schools, they voted in tandem, with the notable exception of Albuquerque.
Las Cruces had four against. Santa Fe and Capital voted in favor, as did Piedra Vista and Farmington, plus West Las Vegas and Robertson, and also Goddard and Roswell.
Los Lunas and Valencia voted against, as did Gallup and Miyamura.
James Yodice covers prep sports for the Journal. You can reach him at [email protected] or via X at @JamesDYodice.
How schools voted
Member schools of the New Mexico Activities Association have voted recently on a major overhaul of Section 6 of the NMAA’s handbook. Here’s how each school cast its vote.
Schools that voted to revise Section 6
*
Academy for Technology and the Classics
*
Albuquerque Academy
*
Albuquerque High School
*
Animas High School
*
Atrisco Heritage Academy
*
Aztec High School
*
Bernalillo High School
*
Bloomfield High School
*
Capital High School
*
Cleveland High School
*
Cloudcroft High School
*
Cobre High School
*
Deming High School
*
Dora High School
*
Eldorado High School
*
Elida High School
*
Escalante High School
*
Farmington High School
*
Floyd High School
*
Fort Sumner High School
*
Gateway Christian High School
*
Goddard High School
*
Highland High School
*
Hondo Valley High School
*
Hope Christian High School
*
Hozho Academy
*
Kirtland Central High School
*
La Cueva High School
*
Lake Arthur High School
*
Loving High School
*
Magdalena High School
*
Manzano High School
*
McCurdy High School
*
Melrose High School
*
Mesa Vista High School
*
Mescalero Apache School
*
Mesilla Valley Christian School
*
Monte del Sol
*
Mora High School
*
Moriarty High School
*
Mountainair High School
*
Newcomb High School
*
Northwest
*
Pecos High School
*
Piedra Vista High School
*
Pine Hill High School
*
Pojoaque High School
*
Portales High School
*
Raton High School
*
Rio Rancho High School
*
Robertson High School
*
Roswell High School
*
Santa Fe High School
*
Santa Rosa High School
*
Shiprock High School
*
Silver High School
*
Socorro High School
*
St. Michael's High School
*
St. Pius X High School
*
Taos High School
*
Texico High School
*
Valley High School
*
Vaughn High School
*
Volcano Vista High School
*
West Las Vegas High School
*
West Mesa High School
*
Zuni High School
Schools that voted against revising Section 6
*
Alamogordo High School
*
Artesia High School
*
Belen High School
*
Bosque School
*
Carlsbad High School
*
Carrizozo High School
*
Centennial High School
*
Chaparral High School
*
Cibola High School
*
Clovis High School
*
Crownpoint High School
*
Cuba High School
*
Del Norte High School
*
Des Moines High School
*
Dulce High School
*
East Mountain High School
*
Española Valley High School
*
Estancia High School
*
Eunice High School
*
Gadsden High School
*
Gallup High School
*
Grady High School
*
Grants High School
*
Hagerman High School
*
Hatch Valley High School
*
Hobbs High School
*
Hot Springs High School
*
Jal High School
*
Laguna Acoma High School
*
Las Cruces High School
*
Logan High School
*
Los Alamos High School
*
Los Lunas High School
*
Lovington High School
*
Maxwell High School
*
Mayfield High School
*
Miyamura High School
*
Mosquero High School
*
Navajo Pine High School
*
Oak Grove Classical Academy
*
Organ Mountain High School
*
Peñasco High School
*
Quemado High School
*
Questa High School
*
Ramah High School
*
Rio Grande High School
*
Roy High School
*
Ruidoso High School
*
Sandia High School
*
Santa Fe Prep
*
Springer High School
*
Tatum High School
*
Thoreau High School
*
Tohatchi High School
*
Tse'Yi'Gai High School
*
Tucumcari High School
*
Tularosa High School
*
Valencia High School
*
Wagon Mound High School
*
Wingate High School
Schools that didn’t vote
*
Alamo Navajo High School
*
Capitan High School
*
Cimarron High School
*
Clayton High School
*
Cliff High School
*
Clovis Christian School
*
Corona High School
*
Coronado High School
*
Cottonwood Classical Prep School
*
Dexter High School
*
House High School
*
Jemez Valley High School
*
Legacy Academy
*
Lordsburg High School
*
Menaul High School
*
Moreno Valley
*
Native American Community Academy
*
Navajo Prep High School
*
NM School for the Blind/Visually Impaired
*
NM School for the Deaf
*
NMMI High School
*
Rehoboth High School
*
Reserve High School
*
San Jon High School
*
Sandia Prep High School
*
Santa Fe Indian School
*
Santa Teresa High School
*
Tierra Encantada
*
To'Hajiilee High School
*
Walatowa Charter High School
Continue reading...
