Wow, can’t believe this thread is still going. I remember looking at this back in 2020 when first transferring to Valor and thinking that people just hated private schools for whatever reason, and brushed off all the rumors of recruiting/scandals/etc. I will say however, after going through Valor for two years and witnessing the complete collapse of a promising high school program that I will never be recommending a private high school of any sort to anyone who is able to afford it; especially if you plan on being involved in athletics. I have long forgotten about some of the lore regarding the 2022 incident, but damn the stress from that whole event took years off of my life.
Anyways, for those wondering about the whole theory about private schools recruiting: yes, that rumor is somewhat true. When visiting the Highlands Ranch area with my family in July 2020, Greg Coplen, the XC/track coach at the time invited us in to tour all of the Valor campus and talk to us about our possible move. We had previously just emailed the school and asked typical questions you would ask if you were moving across the country to another school. Apparently Valor could do this since Coplen was a “campus chaplain”, which I still have no idea what that means, and wasn’t technically just the XC/track coach. So in a sense, yes, private schools do recruit through a CHSAA loop hole. And yes, I do agree that all the strings a private school can pull to over-complicate high school athletics is outrageous. For other schools in the area being accused of recruiting/private coaching, such as Mountain Vista, Niwot, etc.. that’s just a bad statewide athletics cultural thing. Regardless of if any of these public high schools are illegally recruiting, there shouldn’t be people transferring to high schools 1 mile apart from eachother solely because of athletics, nor should someone be hiring a “private coach” to help them as it kills team culture. For some reason hs runners in Colorado love their private coaching more than there own team culture, which is what actually led to a lot the issues in the Valor program that is still being affected today with them not having anyone who is willing to coach. For example, there was no private coaching/recruiting stuff when I ran for CG my Freshman year and later my Senior year after moving back to Indiana. Teams were built off of strict district rules and pure team culture, not “I’m so self absorbed that my parents have to get me a private coach so I can act better than everyone on my team.”
I never really get on letsrun, but I figured I might have some good input on this situation. I’ll reply to anyone who has questions.