The Story of an Underrated Prep Athlete

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
In the spring of nineteen seventy six, a weary mother
was making rounds to the public schools in her new town,
registering her seven kids. She and her husband, an air
traffic controller, had just moved to Lincoln from Indianola, Iowa,
for a new job. The last stop that day was
Southeast High School. She was alone for her oldest was

(00:21):
still back home leading his team into the state basketball
championship game. He'd be here on Monday. At Southeast, Mom
met her son's future guidance counselor. He asked about him.
Mon confessed kid loves sports, plays everything best on the teams.
The councilor took that information directly to the head football
and basketball coaches, who then climbed in the car drove

(00:43):
to Des Moines to check out their April Christmas gift.
The kid was Vernon Fisher, who as quarterback led the
Knights under Frank Solich to the state football title and
the next spring the basketball team to the state title game.
He remains one of the most underrated high school athletes
of Nebraska's last fifty years. Now, how did he wind

(01:07):
up at Southeast and not East or Northeast or Lincoln
High Shirley Solich, his lieutenants and head basketball coach Wally
mcnott knew ahead of time and inserted themselves into all
of this, tracking down Mom and Dad Fisher arranging a
Barracouder realtor who favored homes near Southeast, selling the Fisher

(01:28):
family on Southeast state titles and all state selections. How
Knights got more athletic scholarships than Link's Rockets or Spartans. Well,
none of the above. Vernon Fisher wound up there because
his family of nine needed a place with enough room
for everybody. And it seems an old church on fortieth

(01:48):
LaSalle Streets, about a mile from Southeast High was converted
into a single family ranch style house just in the
nick of time sold. I wonder how many of today's
high profile high school transfers share a similar route. Not many.
This past week, the Millard South football team was forced

(02:09):
to forfeit its first win of the season because they
used three players who a year ago lived in Kansas City,
moved to Omaha, and in with an assistant coach that
is against the ncs SAA rules. The coach is on suspension.
Never mind that all three grew up in the Millard
South District with half the team. They weren't here by

(02:32):
the May first transferred deadline. After May first of every year,
you must have a permanent address within the district and
a legal guardian living there with you to be eligible.
A similar rule violation cost Gretna a state title, but
the entire transfer culture is out of control. In twenty

(02:53):
twenty four, one Nebraska kid transferred twice in the same
football season, played for three different high school teams in
the same year, one of them in a different town.
But today, if you meet the NSAA deadline, you don't
even have to live in the defined school district. The
NSAA essentially sanctions a transfer portal for high school kids,

(03:17):
and the time has come for it to crack down
on transfers and mandate a universal, inflexible policy. You must
physically reside within the defined borders of that high school
for one year before being eligible to compete in any
extracurricular activity from football and basketball to debate and show choir.

(03:39):
No exceptions unless your family moves from another community outside
of the metro area or it involves a private school. Today,
each district has its own policy. Ops and Millard allow
transfers from outside the district boundaries, but Elkhorn does not.
The existing policy forbids coaches from directly to ampering with

(04:00):
kids at other schools, but it favors aggressive coaches whose
scout opponents review film and then happily dispatch influencers to
lure key transfer candidates through parental or peer pressure. That's
how the best players from Northwest, Elkhorn, North and Central
all wound up at Millard South a year ago. This

(04:23):
is an acute issue that can no longer be tabled.
If coaches go about acquiring free agents, the rank and
file kids will be turned off, give up the sport,
robbing them of a wonderful experience with their childhood pals. Yes,
the coaches too, who go from being mentors and teachers
to player personnel directors.