Open Season
Open enrollment is critical to building the talent pool of the two programs.
The recruitment of high school student-athletes is prohibited at public schools under the rules of Arizona Interscholastic Athletics.
That said, schools are always selling, selling, selling, especially in districts with open enrollment.
The Chandler Unified School District is among those districts with open enrollment, and naturally, they are among the schools that have had the most athletic and academic success.
Having open enrollment instantly increases the size of the talent pool, allowing those from Gilbert, Tempe, Mesa and the other surrounding towns to pursue the best quality of education and athletic achievement.
With schools with the athletic history of a place like Hamilton or the IB program of a place like Chandler, open enrollment allows students the chance to make a choice for what is best for them.
“Any successful football program in the greater Phoenix area right now has open enrollment and it’s a huge piece of that success,” former Chandler coach Jim Ewan said. “It was that was for schools having success in anything, and for Chandler, there was really no new housing developments going into Chandler [High]. All of them were in southeast Chandler. If there was no open enrollment, a lot of those players who ended up at Chandler High would not have been there. Absolutely, open enrollment is a huge piece of the success Chandler’s having and all the schools are having right now.”
While John Wrenn was building a championship program year in and year out, he heavily relied on open enrollment to reload.
“It’s always difficult. It’s difficult, but in a state where people can go to school where they want to with open enrollment, you don’t have to recruit once you become successful. People tend to come your way. They said we actually went out and got kids, but we didn’t, because people came to us. They wanted to play for our program.
“It’s a huge asset, because, like I said, once you’re successful, where are people going to send their son? If they think their son has an opportunity to be very, very successful, [they will go to Hamilton].”
His successor, Steve Belles, has had the same advantage.
“It’s huge,” Belles said. “I think the open enrollment comes down to, you want your place to be a destination place. You want your kids to want to come here from outside your attendance zone. It’s not only good for the district, but it’s good for the football programs. If you don’t have those, you’re never going to be one of the elite programs. But you want them as freshmen. I think, if you get them as freshmen, it’s a lot different than getting a transfer who’s a junior, because they’re engrossed in your culture and that’s a big deal, as well.”
As Hamilton continued to grow its national profile, it led to a ripple effect that brought more and more talent to the city as a whole.
“I think the one thing is when Hamilton first opened, of course we had to prove ourselves,” Hamilton offensive coordinator Deke Schutes said. “But with all the growth out there, and when we did get to that first championship game, everybody that was moving to southeast Chandler wanted to come to Hamilton and there was only us in Chandler so the amount of schools they had to pick from weren’t that many. We had a lot of kids who said, ‘Hey, that school just went to the championship. I think I want to go there.’
“Then you add in 15 years later you’ve got Perry, Casteel, Basha and there’s a lot more good football players everywhere, but it’s not just sticking between Hamilton and Chandler. Now there’s five choices to where to go to school, so what we have to do is make sure that we’re out there being present. We have football camps, different things that we offer through the district You just try to have the kids come over and be around you see them be coached and see how you would do things so their family will say they want to go to that school. I guess it would be like any kind of job. You try to sell your product, and you need the parents and the kids to realize that you have a pretty good product. Do we get all of who you want to get? No. But we sure get enough, and if we can keep doing that then we can keep being where we’re at.”
Added Chandler offensive coordinator Rick Garretson: “Of course, with the open enrollment, that changes a lot of dynamics of who’s got what and where kids go. You can go where you want to go, and not just have boundaries. People talking about how we have to have boundaries, but that’s back in the 1950s, man. This is the 21st century. Kids want to go, and parents want to send their kids, to schools and programs that will help them move forward. I don’t know how that’s happened, but I’ve seen it.”
Chandler coach Shaun Aguano has been a particular beneficiary of the open enrollment policy in recent years. Each of his last four quarterbacks entering the 2016 season were from out of boundary, with each going on to play in the Pac-12. Others, such as defensive lineman JW Windsor and wide receivers Dione Sykes and N’Keal Harry, were critical in playoff runs for the Wolves.
“I think the culture that we have bred brings kids here not only from the standpoint of a lot of kids are being recognized and going to play college football, but that our coaches take care of our kids,” Aguano said. “It’s more of a family. I enjoy open enrollment. The reason why I like open enrollment is because my kids are on open enrollment, too, and I’m going to look for the best place that fits for my kids as well from a culture standpoint, from an academic standpoint and an athletic standpoint. I think that Chandler High fits all of those molds. When you build a culture like that and you win, everyone wants to be a part of a winner. When people talk about us recruiting or whatever it is, I think our programs here at Chandler speak for themselves and people want to be a part of it and they come to us.
“I think that the Chandler Unified School District’s administration gets it, all the way from [superintendent] Camile Casteel at the top to our site principals. They understand that athletics and academics fit together, and so it’s not pushed aside. If a program or school is successful in academics and athletics, then everything is successful. I think they put a huge emphasis on athletics because it plays so much in a kid’s life. In the Chandler Unified School District, there’s more and more open enrollment and more and more families are coming into our district. We emphasize all of those… Anybody who’s relocating from out of state is first going to look for where the best schools are. We’ve always been the best district, and I can’t see my kids going any place else. Whenever people move, I think that’s the reason why they’re moving. For one, if they have kids, they’re going to be in the best school district.”
Sykes said the process for a transfer at Chandler boiled down to football and getting recruited to the next level, though his tour of the school hardly made any mention of that.
“They don’t talk about football,” Sykes said. “Not one bit. That’s the coaches’ jobs, to get you prepared and get you better. They’re not worried about that at all. They are worried about you coming in and working hard not in the weight room or not even on the football field, but in the classroom. That’s a big part of why Chandler is so successful, I think, is because coach Aguano picks and chooses who he wants to bring in and he just has you prepared. He’s not worried. He just wants you to work hard in everything else, because he’s so confident in his coaching and his coaching staff to get you better and get you recruited. He’s not worried about football at all, he’s worried about how you’re acting and what type of person you are and how you are in the community and to other people. That’s what he’s worried about, because Chandler High, they have a bad reputation for being ghetto or having ghetto players. He really tries to have the best people on his team. I know that for sure, because I went through it myself.”
Football accomplishment will do a lot to bring in premier talent with open enrollment, as was the case with former Hamilton linebackers Jimmy Rogers and Santana Sterling, each of whom were originally slated to go to Chandler and Basha, respectively.
“I’ve always played with the best kids in the best leagues, and I didn’t want that to change once I got to high school,” Sterling said of choosing Hamilton. “I felt like I was a player that could compete at that level, and I just liked everything that I had going there. It was a perfect fit, I felt like.”
In the end, the coaches and administrators want the best kids. It’s just a matter of making their program good enough to draw those kids in.
