The UHSAA took up “open conversations and communications” with member schools both for and against F-1 visa athlete eligibility in the weeks since the January ruling, assistant director Jeff Cluff told the Standard-Examiner.

Students previously affected by the UHSAA’s student visa rule became eligible immediately with the injunction. Currently appealing the decision, the UHSAA cannot put forth any changes or new bylaws to its student visa policy until the next constitution and bylaws meeting in April.

In the interim, programs like Layton Christian’s girls basketball team are postseason eligible — in contrast to some fall sports programs, including football, that were left out of the playoffs when the rule was still in force.

“We have to address the needs of (schools with enrolled F-1 students), as well as the people who also didn’t want the F-1 students playing, who are also our member schools,” Cluff said. “We have to listen to all parties involved and come to a resolution so we have a plan in place moving forward and how we’re going to handle that. We’re just not ready to speak on that yet.”

BRIAN WOLFER, Special to the Standard-Examiner

Leading up to the injunction, the UHSAA already received a lawsuit from a Juan Diego student-athlete in October pointing to the association’s student visa rule as discriminatory. At the time, F-1 visa students could participate in varsity sports but teams fielding such students became ineligible for postseason play.

Fall sports were unmistakably affected by the rule, including 21 seniors playing their final season for Layton Christian Academy’s football program, which went 6-4 overall and 4-0 against 2A North region competition. First-year school athletic director Gabe Pethel was tasked with navigating such circumstances during his first semester on the job.

Pethel, moving to Utah from Indiana, is concentrating on maintaining “safe, healthy environments” for prospective students regardless of origin or eligibility status.

“Ultimately, (it’s) what kids want and, I think, definitely parents want — whether they’re a parent here in Utah or especially if it’s a parent in another country who’s choosing to send their kid for a special opportunity to be educated in the United States,” Pethel said.

Private schools such as Layton Christian, Juan Diego Catholic and Judge Memorial Catholic all took steps to recourse their athletic programs this fall. In the case of Layton Christian, which features a no-cut policy for students wanting to participate in team sports, that included a hard look at each program individually.

CONNER BECKER, Standard-Examiner

Layton Christian’s head of school, Chris Crowder, said continuous accusations of “recruiting” and “bad feelings” regarding the school’s international students come with the territory of operating as a private institution compared to a public one.

“We’re not going out and recruiting football or basketball players,” Crowder said. “Out of the (international students) we have here, most of the controversy against us is mostly geared towards boys basketball because they’re a little better than your average team.”

Crowder told the Standard-Examiner that each case of alleged recruiting brought against the school included zero substantial evidence the school engaged in illicit practices when admitting international students. Both Crowder and Pethel expressed their disappointment with the UHSAA’s handling of such matters leading up to the injunction.

“That’s where some people try to distort facts,” Crowder said. “There are some confidential family things that are none of anybody’s business. Our goals here — I don’t care about sports that much, that’s not my motivation. I don’t care if we win or not.”

The issue of recruiting within interscholastic athletics undoubtedly influenced the UHSAA’s latest transfer rule, requiring transfer students to sit out half “the allowable contests in those sports in which the student competed during the 12 months immediately preceding the season in which the student is seeking eligibility,” according to the association’s website.

The F-1 student visa issue, as well as domestic influence among coaches and parents to attend a specific school, are factors that Marc Hunter considers growlingly meddlesome in pursuit of fairness. Hunter is a former high school administrator and was executive director of the Utah Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association for 30 years.

“We’re seeing, as we’ve seen in the past, certain schools use this to their advantage,” Hunter said. “I don’t want to paint the whole thing with a broad brush because I don’t think that’s fair.”

A national conversation around school choice and the U.S. Department of Education encompasses state-specific issues like Utah’s F-1 student visa rule. In Hunter’s opinion, the UHSAA provided a legitimate answer when dealing with such athletes.

“I think one of the good answers was what the (UHSAA) did with the F-1 kids, but I’m sure my opinion’s in the minority with some of these private or charter schools,” Hunter said.

When the student visa rule was proposed in April 2024, Crowder and multiple private schools were on the front lines arguing on behalf of their students. Multiple Layton Christian students wrote and presented essays defending their eligibility to play sports during such discussions with the UHSAA.

Layton Christian’s boys basketball team — the defending 4A state champions with three seniors signed to Division I schools, two of whom are international players — began competing independently within the UHSAA starting this winter.

In doing so, the team is no longer eligible for the UHSAA postseason. LCA broadened its schedule with multiple interstate tournaments and entered Friday 12-1 against UHSAA opponents this season.

Pethel described the transition as “a new era in our ability to compete in Utah and country-wide basketball.”

“Things have changed,” Pethel said. “I think the expectations and needs of parents were different than they are in the whole United States today. You see things like school choice coming about in systems of opportunity for people to decide to send their child to one district or another within a public school system, or possibly even receive state money to apply toward private school or home school.”

International students attending schools like Layton Christian will retain their postseason eligibility for the foreseeable future.

“Those students are eligible to participate immediately when those came on and that’s a non-negotiable for us,” Cluff said. “Until we come up with a different rule, or if and when we come up with a different rule, or maybe we don’t at all, they fall under our previous rule. Or, they fall under whatever — that’s to be determined by the association.”

The student visa rule, and subsequent injunction, will serve as a measuring stick for the UHSAA in future deliberation. Just what sort of changes, if any, are made to visa students’ eligibility rides on the outcome of the current case handed down by the U.S. District Court.

Connect with prep sports reporter Conner Becker at cbecker@standard.net and X @ctbecker.