J425 Exclusive: Roosevelt Football is Falsely Registering Football Recruits as Homeless in Order to Circumvent Transfer & Eligibility Rules
A dozen of the state’s top players lured with promises of scholarships, immediate eligibility, freedom from grade & attendance checks and access to a private on-campus club just for football players.
SEATTLE — A state-appointed fact-finder is investigating allegations of improper recruiting at the Roosevelt football program. J425 can confirm that the Vancouver-area attorney has begun interviewing witnesses and whistleblowers in support of the Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association-mandated inquiry she’s conducting.
At issue are allegations of recruiting violations initially brought forward by a fellow Metro league school and made public by J425’s October 3 report.
Today, J425 can exclusively confirm that the initial allegation of wrongdoing is joined by multiple serious new claims of corruption bordering on a lack of institutional control. In reporting this story, J425 spoke to multiple whistleblowers including current and former Roosevelt High School staff. Those we spoke with said they lacked belief in building leadership, feared retribution for speaking out against Coach Adams’ program and generally described an atmosphere of corruption and a football culture run amok inside Roosevelt.
Major concerns voiced by verified current and former staff include the following:
Current and former RHS staff described an administrative onboarding enrollment process purpose-built to falsely enroll transfer athletes as homeless students in order to circumvent transfer and eligibility rules.
Sources say that as a result, football transfers also weren’t subject to typical athletic eligibility standards, including attendance and minimum GPA checks. J425 spoke with multiple current and former staff who said they’d brought their concerns about the alleged abuse of federal homeless student designations up with building administration including the principal, to no avail. 1
Multiple staff sources described a poisonous internal culture surrounding the football program, describing an on-campus environment where transfer athletes spend the day hiding away in the booster-funded “Kennel Club”, a spot that staff members describe as a private club where football transfers can privately retreat en masse for periods at a time, while regular students go about their days.
Multiple sources say the amount of out-of-district transfer players far exceeded the 13 identified in the J425 report. One source verified the KUOW report that around 20 players were out of district transfers, another told us that “hardly any” of the players on the 2024 football roster came from SPSD feeder schools, providing a series of annual football rosters as evidence.
Finally, current and former staff also described contentious incidents with football staff, including an altercation in the parking lot between a football coach and a staffer that occurred in plain view of students, parents and at least two current and former staffers who said they reported the matter to building administration, to no avail.
The fact-finder, a decorated Vancouver-area attorney with significant education-sector experience, was tapped by the WIAA board after the Metro League and District 2 brought forward allegations of recruiting violations linked to Roosevelt football that the state board deemed worthy of further investigation.
The scope and timeline of the investigation is unknown, but if past is prologue, the matter could echo the 2016 Bellevue High School recruiting investigation – which is also the last time WIAA turned to fact-finders in order to get to the bottom of a controversy.
In the Bellevue matter, WIAA selected two former federal prosecutors and directed them to look “under rocks, under rocks, under rocks.” They did, turning up seven sustained major violations via a 70+ page report compiled after six months of interviews and investigation plagued by school district obfuscation.
As a result of the 2016 probe, the state’s winningest coach Butch Goncharoff was hit with a two year ban and the football program was barred from playoff competition for several years. It’s also worth noting that a Bellevue athletic trainer named Tracy Ford is mentioned 27 times in the 2016 final report, with investigators raising questions about Ford’s involvement in the recruiting scandal. To be clear, Ford wasn’t the subject of any investigatory finding, and he ultimately left BHS to launch his Ford Sports Performance (FSP) training and 7v7 business, where he was rejoined by Goncharoff and former NFL players including Sam Adams.
And now, some nine years later, another WIAA fact finder is looking into alleged recruiting violations, this time related to Adams’ Rough Rider program… and the torrent of FSP-linked players who transferred in prior to the 2024 season.
Reviewing the Core Recruiting Allegations
Breaking: Roosevelt Football Under Investigation for Alleged Recruiting Violations
RENTON, WA – The Roosevelt football program is under investigation at the state, district and league level for possible recruiting violations after at least 12 highly-recruited student athletes transferred into the football program since the end of last season.
Last October, J425 broke the story that Roosevelt High School football was under state investigation for alleged recruiting violations. The October 3 report revealed that the WIAA board officially approved “actions taken by the Metro League, WIAA District 2, and District Directors regarding alleged recruiting violations by Roosevelt High School and the appointment of a fact finder.”
The state board’s action knocked the lid off a simmering story, and our report detailed the worst-kept secret in Washington prep football: the fact that in the months leading up to the 2024 football season, at least a dozen of the state’s very best football talents – established stars from all across the region – withdrew from their previous high schools and showed up en masse at Roosevelt High School’s 66th Street campus.
Under first year head coach Sam Adams, (a former NFL player who’d until recently, could be found coaching and training players at Tracy Ford’s Ford Sports Performance, better known as FSP), the influx of new talent helped the Rough Riders to a third place finish in Metro, an 8-4 record and an appearance in the 3A state playoff quarterfinals, ending a lengthy playoff drought for the storied Seattle high school.
Our report contextualized the WIAA probe with details collected around the 425, revealing exactly how third-party brokers contacted local players and offered – among other things – benefits including: slots on a high-profile 7v7 team, fee waivers, travel and equipment funds, increased recruiting visibility and even, in some cases, college scholarship offers – contingent on a transfer to Roosevelt High School.
Specifically, J425’s October 3 report identified and listed a dozen highly-ranked football recruits with ties to the 7v7 brand, each of whom departed starring roles at high schools in places like Burien, Federal Way, Lake Stevens and Puyallup – before showing up en masse prior to the 2024 season at Roosevelt High School – and gaining immediate eligibility.
According to WIAA transfer rules, in order to gain immediate eligibility, an athlete’s transfer must be the result of a full-family residential move inside school boundaries for reasons unassociated with athletics. As in “dad got a new job and bought a new house”.2
Preseason 2024: Spate of Transfers Leaves WA Prep Football World in Disarray
In a state that typically requires transferring varsity athletes to sit out a season before joining a new program, the fact that at least a dozen prominent football players all transferred to the same previously-mediocre 3A program, where – under a coach linked to the region’s top 7v7 trainer – they somehow managed to gain immediate eligibility …well, this set of facts hadn’t escaped the watching eyes of area coaches and athletic directors. But the issue hadn’t boiled over.
Washington high school football is an insular community with a self-policing ethos. Under Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association rules, each school is charged with self-enforcing the mutually-adopted rules, a concept the association is so wedded to that it doesn't utilize compliance officers or investigators and it requires that only member schools may submit a complaint about another member: the WIAA isn’t interested in your dirt. And that’s why official complaints are rare. ADs don’t like to rat out the guy they’re gonna see at the District 2 meeting, coaches are loathe to turn in a colleague. That’s not to say they won’t bitch and moan.
But by mid summer 2024, the bitching and moaning was becoming audible. In Lake Stevens, the back-to-back returning 4A champions watched a starting skill player pack up and leave a starring role with the Vikings – and an all-but-guaranteed six-to-eight targets per game from Gatorade State Player of the Year QB Kolton Matson – in favor of the green and gold of Roosevelt.
Other players in the 425 – most of whom trained or played 7v7 for FSP, began to talk openly about the prospect of transferring to Roosevelt. Some players told their coaches about the contact, some told media. As we previously reported, multiple high-profile 425-area football players turned down the offers and instead provided screenshots of Roosevelt transfer communication to coaches, administrators and even media.
Our reporting highlighted the growing discontent among coaches who’d had players poached – and from the industry as a whole, citing a survey of Washington State high school football coaches conducted by respected journalist Todd Milles, a fixture in the state prep athletics scene, in which multiple head coaches complained about the wave of transfers headed to the Seattle school, the unchecked influence of 7v7 trainers and the growing sense of lawlessness across the state high school football scene.
Many of the comments were seemingly directed directly at the growing Roosevelt scandal.
“We need some guardrails in place. It's clear that some schools are becoming magnets and I worry that private trainers are becoming too influential. There also needs to be some awareness by the WIAA when a large number of impact players all of a sudden move to the same school(s),” said one 4A head coach.
Coaches described an environment in which they were forced to sit idly by while “unvetted” third-party trainers and 7v7 impresarios enjoyed unlimited access to their kids. Access, the coaches felt, that was being used to poach an even monetize players.
"I wish the state would understand that not allowing coaches to work with their kids in the offseason is only allowing outside people to make money off our kids. Kids are going to train in the off season so why not let the people who are vetted by the schools work with the kids. We are forced to use outside sources with no vetting process to run off season workouts,” said one 4A coach, in a not-so-veiled reference to the 7v7 community.
The concerns espoused by the coaches were reinforced when news of the state investigation broke. J425’s initial reporting broke the story, KUOW and KING 5 followed on with parallel reports.
A torrent of new evidence followed the published reports. Over the next month, J425 was contacted by numerous sources with direct, first-hand accounts of alleged impropriety related to the Roosevelt football program. This includes multiple current and former Roosevelt staff members; coaches, teachers and student athletes.
Evidence provided by current and former Roosevelt staff opened up several additional areas of focus, most of which we simply do not have the resources to thoroughly investigate. J425 did confirm the identity of the sources tied to the most concerning allegations and for the purposes of this report, we simply summarize and relay the concerns brought to us in response to our initial report.
The Precedent for Abusing Homeless Designations: Garfield, 2017
If allegations prove true, Roosevelt would not be the first Seattle school in which transfer athletes usurped federally-mandated McKinney-Vento Act benefits provided to homeless students in order to get around WIAA residency rules as well as basic eligibility requirements including daily attendance and minimum GPAs.
In 2017, allegations of Garfield’s football program recruiting multiple out-of-area players surfaced in the local media and anonymous complaints were sent to state and district officials. Seattle Public School District hired Perkins Coie to investigate a number of “had a number of high profile football players transfer into the Garfield attendance area who either have addresses of doubtful validity or are being (falsely) identified as homeless. The investigator found “a body of evidence that casts validity on the residences of record of the high-profile athletes that transferred into Garfield. The investigator further described how a star player was allowed to circumvent WIAA grade and attendance eligibility requirements because the principal had designated the player as homeless, triggering protections provided to homeless students extended by the McKinney Vento Act. This federal legislation requires that any barriers preventing homeless students from participating in athletics must be removed – this includes any transfer rules enforced by WIAA and the minimum GPA and school attendance requirements that are required of other student athletes.
The 2017 Perkins Coie report found that the Garfield athlete was not, in fact, homeless. A 2017 Seattle Times investigation into the same subject matter wrote that homeless designations assigned to incoming athletes are “supposed to be reviewed by a district-level committee to ensure the legitimacy of their status.” But the Times report stated that no such hearing occurred with respect to the Garfield transfer. The Perkins Coie report commissioned by SPSD cleared Garfield of recruiting allegations, despite finding “a body of evidence” that the players were using fake addresses and determining that a homeless designation placed on an athlete who wasn’t in fact homeless had allowed a player to circumvent eligibility requirements. Given that the scope of the investigation was narrowed to whether the football coach engaged in improper recruiting, and given that none of the complaints “provided direct evidence” proving that the coach engaged in improper recruiting, SPSD in effect cleared Garfield.
But the fact that the McKinney-Vento act was used to suddenly turn an ineligible player eligible, simply by labelling the player in question homeless, should’ve raised red flags and resulted in changes at the district level. And not just for athletic reasons.
What Do Homeless Student Designations Have to Do with Athletic Eligibility?
Holistically, the problem of child homelessness is staggering. The most recent published data identifies 39,972 homeless students enrolled in Washington public schools – over 4,300 of which are both homeless and alone (lacking a parental guardian or custodial adult). The McKinney Vento Act is the federal legislation that requires school districts to locate, identify, and insure that every homeless child within their boundaries has access to their constitutionally-guaranteed education and the benefits that accompany it (free breakfast and lunch, transportation, extra-curricular activities, etc).
Practically speaking this means districts are required to census their area, locate the homeless kids, get them to school and back, and report the information back to state and federal agencies. Specifically, the feds instruct districts to check for kids in “hotels, motels, trailer parks or camping grounds; emergency or transitional shelters; cars, parks, busses; abandoned buildings and other places not designed for humans to live in.”
Once identified, students are enrolled in the local district, provided transportation to school and free meals and other educational support granted by the program. Districts report the homeless data back up the chain, and the feds disburse funding to cover the costs involved in this work on a per-child basis.
So how does this relate to athletics? Because of the obvious hardships faced by students living in “abandoned buildings and other places not designed for humans to live in”, federal law requires barriers preventing their assimilation in school to be removed. And that’s why a homeless student isn’t subject to athletic eligibility rules enforced by WIAA. And this makes sense for students in such desperate situations. The kid is living under a damned bridge. Are you really gonna send her back there at 3:00 sharp because she hasn’t met grade check, or are you going to waive that requirement and let her participate in athletics? The answer is obvious.
Now that you understand the plight of the homeless student and the important work mandated by the McKinney Vento Act, revisit the fact that a 2017 investigation showed that Garfield falsely labeled an athlete homeless in order to get around athletic eligibility requirements. This should’ve been a red alert to SPSD for a number of reasons, with the concepts of honesty and morality leading the list.
Any forward-thinking administrator should’ve seen the ease in which a simple designation circumvents transfer requirements that – at the time – required athletes to sit out as long as an entire school year before joining a new team…and academic/attendance requirements that expected students to, among other things, actually live in the district, attend school and maintain at least a C average in class. In seeing an example of the abuse of these provisions, steps should’ve been taken to cut-off future abuse.
Setting aside the moral problems, there are also the legal issues. Homeless data is required to be reported to the feds so they can cut per-student checks to cover the costs associated with educating homeless kids. In improperly designating a student athlete as homeless for eligibility reasons, the risk arises of fraudulent reporting and the improper assignment of tax dollars, should non-homeless students be reported as homeless.
And if the district simply identifies the student as homeless at the local level – but refrains from reporting the data externally (to avoid potential fraud)...well, then that student is not actually a designated McKinney-Vento Act recipient. They aren’t homeless.
Multiple sources state that building administration is complicit in circumventing state and district policy in order to facilitate athletic transfers. Two sources cited an internal email circulated by the principal in which supposed external complaints regarding the football program were simultaneously acknowledged and then swiftly dismissed, with the principal claiming that allegations of wrongdoing had been investigated and deemed unfounded. These findings were viewed as dubious at best.
In other words, for these transfers to be above board, you’d have to believe that 12 of the state’s top prospects, all of whom happen to play for the same 7v7 team, simultaneously left their previous high schools, at locations scattered around the state, because – in each case – the players’ entire family had just moved from Bethel and Puyallup and Federal Way etc… into new family households inside Roosevelt boundaries… for reasons totally unassociated with athletics.
Previously:
What's Next for Roosevelt: In 2015, Appointing a "Fact Finder" Meant Retaining a Team of Federal Prosecutors
“N—, I found you. I personally hand-picked you guys and sold you to the agent. And the agent paid me for you guys. This is modern-day slavery, man. This is a (expletive) business. I sold you like a slave owner. Like a slave owner.”