This story has been developing for weeks which started with VHSL banning Hayfield HS from the playoffs for two years, then the courts got involved, Hayfield gets reinstated, win their first round game, then more evidence surfaces of a coverup at the school, and now and Hayfield HS withdrew its team from further competition.
Not only is this a bad look but the leadership in the school board look like total idiots, and several football coaches has issued a vote of no confidence for the superintendent, and now the Hayfield HS AD is taking a leave of absence .
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You know it's bad when you scheme to win VA 6C high school football
Hayfields AD announced his pending LOA before the original VHSL ruling. His wife accepted a job overseas. It now looks like his LOA won't be necessary because he likely won't have a job.
My only real problem in everything that happened initially was that VHSL reviewed all the transfers and approved them.
I have seen the stuff about the text messages with the AD but am tired of adults punishing children for adult decisions and when said children were approved to be there.
If VHSL had such a big problem then why didn't they do a more thorough vetting process? The majority of the kids transferred mid year last year. VHSL had the ENTIRE summer to do due diligence but chose not to and it was only when Hayfield started destroying teams that the other coaches filed grievances.
This does impact the Hokies to a degree as Jeff Overton is on Hayfield and his dad is the coach at the center of all this.
OH! So Jeff was one of those illegal recruits! -- JK, this seems overblown. I remember my high school WT Woodson recruiting both soccer and lacrosse players 25 years ago and winning state championships with U.S.-level soccer players Abe Thompson and Clarence Goodson. So, idk, but perhaps 14 transfers all in one year that follow a coach would be an obvious recruiting scheme. I guess recruiting is legal as long as you don't make it super obvious. And even in this case, it was legal until it wasn't.
And definitely sucks for those players and the Overton family.
There are at least two high schools in Loudoun County that have been recruiting football players for ten or more years. They are consistently in the mix for Regional championships and State championships. Never seen them called out for it but they have had stable coaching staff for most of that time. Really came down to the other coaches not liking getting beat by a first year coach and want to play high and mighty.
That's pretty much northern VA everything in a nutshell. Loudoun, Fairfax, doesn't matter.
Recruiting 4 or 5 kids when you move, or trying to pull a few guys in from around your region every year, is by-the-book not permitted but pretty normal.
Cleaning out your old program to the tune of them barely being able to field a team is gonna, and should, get you attention you don't want.
They're just practicing to be the next Kenny Brooks, right?
Mmhmm. But in the NCAA now that's 100% legal. In the VHSL it ain't.
(For now.)
Well hey, ya gotta start somewhere. To screw a major college team as completely as Brooks did takes practice.
Interesting thing to note is that Freedom HS, where Overton came from, 14 players followed him BUT there were 36 players from last year's State Championship team that would have been eligible to play but of those only 8 remained at Freedom. That means 14 more players that did not go to Hayfield went to other schools.
Those numbers make me think that there was a ton of recruiting going on at Freedom before Overton left but no one challenged the Freedom roster last year like this.
the giant red flag was 14 residents of Prince William County suddenly enrolling in a Fairfax County high school
For those not from the area, that's not exactly a close or a convenient drive to Alexandria, regardless of which side of the county you are on.
Eh, it's not that far. Freedom is right by Potomac Mills, Hayfield is like 10 miles up route 1, near Belvoir. Maybe that's the jaded NoVa native in me, "That's only like a 30 min drive!" The biggest issue is it's in another county, that part I can't wrap my head around.
Didn't y'all steal Goodson from Annandale? Just like you and Lake Braddock conspired to redistrict the schools so that you would get our best athletic and academic neighborhoods. Whatever, Annandale still has more football national championships than either of you rich cheaters.
Not relevant to any of this, but my co-worker used to call Annandale "Actiondale," and now I'm not capable hearing the name and thinking of anything else.
All I know is that in Fallout 3 "Andale" is where the cannibals lived.
Had I gone to public school I would have gone to Hayfield. I was just over the line from West Springfield's district. I would not have cared about football, however. It took VT to make me care about football, and then eventually lead me to caring less about football.
I was at a meeting with Fairfax County planners and one of them jokingly called it "uh-naan-duh-lay" which I absolutely love
Probably, I don't know where he came from. I just remember that the Woodson coach either also coached or was involved with their travel team.
It's also weird to me call Woodson a rich school, but there were 2-3 rich neighborhoods that fed into Woodson. The rest of the 80% would be on par with Annandale, I would think. My childhood home address was Annandale, but outside the beltway. And Woodson was far from athletic, except in soccer and lacrosse and that was not based on neighborhoods. We were terrible at football, basketball, and track. We were on a streak of 1 win in football for a decade or so until my junior year. But, idk, maybe it's a different perception from outside.
Woodson was good at academics, though. There were plenty of families that either moved or somehow transferred their kid into Woodson for the academics when I was there. And Fairfax station (one of the rich neighborhoods) was in our district despite having to pass both Robinson and Lake Braddock to get to school because the parents in that neighborhood lobbied the school district.
Can concur here - we definitely were rarely best in athletics when I was there (we had one year where we had a winning record/playoff appearance in football), and even now I think generally only the basketball team has performed well in recent years. But yeah academically I think we were trending towards 2nd/3rd best in the county after TJ
As far as the reported academic ranking, I would first check the criteria.
Swimming, baseball, volleyball. We had a lot of kids at Annandale on free or reduced lunch. And without Ravensworth and Wakefield Chapel, that ratio went up.
I just heard about this the other day when I went to a school boundary redistricting meeting for Fairfax county. A couple of Annandale parents were just as upset as you about how some of their best areas just taken in by other schools. Don't blame you all for being upset though.
The entire redistricting process was extremely racially loaded. But all the families who had kids at Annandale lobbied for Annandale. Parents whose kids hadn't been to high school yet pushed for the redistricting to Woodson. Once their kids got to Woodson it was nothing but complaints about how they didn't like Woodson.
GO ATOMS! Graduated in 99 🔴 ⚪️
GO ATOMS!!! Class of 2011
As a class of 82 Annandale Atom, I heartily approve this post.
YESSIRRR, class of 2011. Grew up going to Atoms football games and I was captain of the swim team.
Not often I go on an Internet forum and find a fellow Woodson alum! (Though I guess given Tech that's not too far-fetched)
Waaaaay back in the day, I met a girl from Woodson at an all state band weekend and we hit it off so well that I invited her to my prom. Then, a week before the prom, my old girlfriend and I got back together. Whooops! Old girlfriend lived a few miles away, Woodson was way up in NOVA. Old girlfriend was fiery blonde Italian whose temper was legendary. Both girls were gorgeous, but old girlfriend's daddy was a tempermental cop who doted on his daughter. Yep, I called it off with the Woodson flute player, and she'd already bought her dress, went to the prom with the Indian River flute player who broke up with me a couple of months later. I have always felt like the heel I was, and if I could just go back and do it differently, but 1968 is just too far back to fix it.
Apparently it's now C. G. Woodson? I didn't realize it was being renamed. Not that I ever cared who Wilbur Tucker Woodson was, but I guess being the longest tenure FCPS superintendent got his name on a school and then removed in 2024 when it's realized that he pushed for maintaining segregation. Conveniently, he shared a last name with a famous black historian from Virginia, so I guess it works. Idk. At least he's interesting.
Yeah rename went into effect this year IIRC
I played against Abe and Clarence in both NCSL and high school. If I recall correctly Woodson was able to get them transferred in because the school was only one of two in Fairfax county with a planetarium and claiming they wanted to study... Planets?... Was enough to approve the transfers.
The other school that had a planetarium? Mine. TJ. And we didn't accept no transfers.
My alma mater, West Springfield, has a planetarium. It was a great place to fall asleep.
Go Spartans!
The only good orange and blue school! Current Principal Mukai is a former Hokie wrestler too
Hayfield had a planetarium as well. At least they did while I was there.
Really? To both you and @CapeHokie. I guess I heard wrong, unless those were built more recently. I graduated HS in 2000.
I graduated in '75, and it was there at that time. No worries.
On a side yet related note, despite West Springfield being huge when I was there (My graduating class had over 725 people in it), our football team underachieved for years. I understand our coach was fired shortly after graduation, evidently because he had placed a tape recorder in one of our opponents' locker rooms.
I graduated in 2002 and I remember it being there. They began a huge remodel of the school during my senior year (at least I think that's when it started) and it may not have survived that.
This does sound reasonable and there was a "state-of-art" planetarium at Woodson. Whatever the reason, whether it was to study planets, was definitely a farce.
Hello, fellow Colonial! Our planetarium was sweet, although I'm not sure I went into it after I took the tour in 8th grade. Missed opportunity.
I was a couple years ahead of you, sounds like, and my athletic experience sounds similar to yours. I played lacrosse, and I remember all the good people we played *against*, lol. We lost to the eventual state champions every year I was there.
Hello fellow alum! Didn't know that you went there too!
Anyway I still have a bumper sticker that says Jefferson we came for the sports
According to the news this morning, he resigned yesterday (Monday, 25-Nov).
VHSL was waiting for the outcome of FCPS' investigation. When it became clear that FCPS was not going to self-police, VHSL got involved. The transfers are also reviewed/approved by the school system (FCPS) - not VHSL - and the school system leadership was complicit in the fraud
Not in this case. Hayfield specifically took every transfers paperwork package to VHSL. VHSL did a second approval of them during a special review in August.
Article Here
Then they can complain all they want, but the school covered their bases.
Too bad it's not turning out that way for the kids
By "covered their bases" you mean conspired to fraudulently enroll out-of-jurisdiction students?
https://www.wusa9.com/article/sports/local-sports/fcps-investigating-tex...
Might be fraudulently, but it was approved...
And who
made upprovided the evidence to VHSL that the transfers were legit?Oh yeah Hayfield
Anybody else remember when Salem said we want you for the team, we will find your parents job after they move here?
I did not hear about this, but it's not surprising. Typical Salem move.
This is what happens when you don't even PRETEND to follow the rules.
My kids go to Lake Braddock, this has been a ride. They canceled their first playoff game about 3 hours before kickoff. Now they're in catch up mode, they've got semifinals tonight and finals on Sat. Whoever makes it out of the region will be nice and rested for state semifinals.
Also, from the texts, apparently they were getting the kids declared homeless so they could pick whatever school they wanted?!?! It's high school football, man, get a grip.
Wait 'til the current issues plaguing college football trickle down to the high school level. NIL for HS sophomores?
yep
this is the tragedy of having a wealthy populace - when stupid people have money they spend it on stupid things
you're not wrong
I believe 9 of the 14 are Seniors that were on track for D1 football scholarships with Overton at Freedom so can understand those kids parents wanting the kids to keep playing for him. High school football with scholarship and NIL implications are a much different scenario than just "it's high school football"
There were also several in line for track scholarships at D1 too and Overton was coaching track as well.
Lot less eyeballs on 1-6 Freedom this year.
Still should have been nipped in the bud if VHSL had done what they are expected to do. Verify and approve transfers is a major part of their job. They did approve all 14. Where was the uproar in the spring when most of these students moved?
Oh it wasn't until the VHSL Coaching Cabal started losing to Hayfield that it became a problem? Hmmm seems a bit late in the game for sour apples.
I honestly hope this leads to an investigation of every school for every sport in Fairfax County. I think the results of that would really show how broken VHSL is as a governing body. Equate it to the NCAA for College football.
Sounds to me like another toothless governing body that can't keep order. Sounds familiar, NCAA?
Unfortunately VHSL has some teeth when they want to but it's mostly a good Ole boys club when it comes to football.
I have a friend who teaches at Hayfield and has been lamenting this debacle since before the school year started. There are tons of rumors about reassignments of some personnel who tried to shine the light on it earlier, a marked increase in security guard hires who also happen to be football coaches, kids not coming to classes (or coming to class and just not participating) - it's just ridiculous. The response from the school board and the county until now has basically been "we have to trust what the adults tell us when they register", and VHSL had to trust what they were getting from the county.
But when you go from a roughly .500 team over the last several years to a team that absolutely steamrolled everyone not named Riverdale Baptist (private school with multiple D1 commits I believe), it's gonna draw some attention. The AD is already gone and my guess is Overton bolts...pronto.
Maybe they can hire Mack Brown now.
Hayfield football alum here so I've been following this story since before the season started. I had a feeling this wasn't going to end well when things started surfacing over the summer, so I am not surprised with how it's developed. It's a shame that the school is going to be forever known for this moving forward.
You just hit on why all of this should never have happened. If VHSL had done their job up front, most of these transfers would not have been approved. If they had done a follow up during the summer then they could have decided kids were ineligible. VHSL did not spend the time or money to do that until the results on the field started happening.
Shady business all around but it should have been prevented.
Totally agree. I was shocked that these kids transfers were being approved. I could see one or two maybe falling through the cracks, or being able to actually work the "loophole", but at this number someone at the county level or VHSL should have stepped in.
Edison alum, here. Pound sand, Hayfield! Jk I do not care about any of this.
This confirms my theory that some people care way too much about things
Coach Overton has resigned and will be taking over as the Director of Football/Head Coach at the new St James Performance Academy being started by The St James Gym. Sounds like it's going to be college athletics prep school from middle school up.
Won't have to worry about recruiting rules anymore. Now he can legit pick NoVa clean. I would expect they will play WCAC schools and travel to play other Academies like IMG.
I saw a local article about this the other day and the lack of recruiting rules was one of the first things they pointed out. I was wondering what they would actually do for games but you just covered that.
Athletes SHOULD have their own schools. And they should be funded by the professional leagues they aspire to.
This applies to colleges, too. We should work towards divesting the junior NFL league from our taxpayer-supported high schools and colleges.
We are at STJ pretty regularly between swim and lacrosse and the Academy stuff is pretty new, so I was surprised to read this. I dug a little and it looks like they are able to get up and going quickly by partnering with TPH Academy for the academics (remote learning probably). They've carved out classroom/meeting room space where they used to have at least some of their staff offices, but it didn't strike me as being a large area. They do have nice indoor turf space, but where it's located I don't see how they can do anything outside - they'll probably dump a bunch of $$ on Fairfax Parks to get an outdoor field, or maybe swing a deal with one of the private schools in the area to use their stadium when available.
I'm torn between being pissed off about the whole thing and just saying good riddance to them from a public school point of view. But it sure as hell isn't going to help parking at STJ, which already sucks.
I have my doubts that the Park Authority be super accommodating to the St. James as a direct competitor. Neighborhood and Community Services handles the field scheduling of park fields so they could try to get some availability there. Nearest rectangles are at Grove Point and Wakefield but they don't have much in the way of spectator seating or locker rooms.
They might have a sell with the politicians if they can speak to the sports tourism angle which was a big help in getting the diamond complex at Patriot Park North done.