Oak Cliff Faith Family is leaving the University Interscholastic League for all sports after the state’s governing body levied heavy penalties on its girls basketball program because of recruiting violations, school representatives told The Dallas Morning News on Thursday.
Faith Family was sending a letter to the UIL on Thursday to inform them of its decision. The UIL recently banned Faith Family’s girls basketball team from the postseason for this season and suspended its coaches for two seasons.
The Faith Family boys basketball program won the Class 4A state title four times in the last six years, including each of the last three seasons. Both the boys and girls programs will play a full national schedule. The UIL girls basketball season began last week and boys basketball starts this weekend, but the Faith Family girls won’t play their first games until this weekend.
“We said we’ve got to be able to participate and we’ve got to take care of our kids, and our kids are first,” Faith Family superintendent Mollie Purcell Mozley said. “We are going to go for a program or a league that will be competitive for us as a district and that also aligns with our core values. We have been in the UIL for 20 years, and this outright prejudice has shaken us, but it has also give us even more resolve to put kids first.”
Faith Family, an open-enrollment charter school, is strongly considering joining the Texas Christian Athletic League, but that move isn’t official yet. That is the league that Legion Prep — an online school that has several of the top recruits in the Dallas area — competed in for girls basketball last season. Legion Prep plays a national schedule and has already played a couple of games this season.
Because Faith Family is leaving the UIL, girls basketball head coach Andrea Robinson and assistant coaches Kadi Creel and Jordan Jones will coach the team and won’t have to serve the two-year suspension that they each were given by the UIL for recruiting violations.
“We made the right decision to hire the best coaches. Why should we change and downgrade just because we’re not playing in the UIL,” Mozley said. “I’m really proud of those coaches, how they handled themselves. This is the first time they have ever had to deal with anything like this is in their whole career. All of my coaching staff has a spotless career with the UIL. It has been traumatic to be accused of something that you didn’t do.”
Robinson and Faith Family boys basketball coach Brandon Thomas did not immediately respond to phone messages seeking comment. The UIL did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
The 18 transfers that the girls basketball team added will be able to play this season. To be eligible for varsity competition in the UIL, they would have had to go through a local district executive committee hearing to have their eligibility approved. UIL rules prohibit students from transferring for athletic purposes.
The transfers include four players ranked among the top 100 recruits in the nation. Two of those — five-star junior forward Amari Byles and four-star junior combo guard Amayah “Sunshine” Garcia — played for Robinson at DeSoto the past two seasons and finished as the Class 6A state runner-up in 2023.
The other big-name players who transferred to Faith Family were four-star Alabama pledge Joy Egbuna from Mansfield Lake Ridge, four-star sophomore point guard Finley Chastain from national champion Montverde in Florida and sisters Gianna, Milania, Natalia and Nadia Jordan from Southlake Carroll. Freshman Kelenna Ozumba, an elite recruit in the Class of 2028 who already has an offer from Ole Miss, transferred to Faith Family instead of staying in Allen ISD to play for Allen High School.
“We have never spoken out against the UIL or questioned them or what they did. I have the ultimate respect,” Mozley said. “I do question the values of a state agency when Texas is such a school of choice for them to come out and literally black ball anybody that is doing well outside of the traditional ISD. I think it’s the last stand for school choice.”
Public charter schools are tuition-free, open-enrollment public schools and have different geographic boundaries than traditional public schools, which Dallas-area coaches argued gave Faith Family an unfair advantage. To be eligible for UIL varsity athletics at Faith Family, students had to live within Dallas ISD, one of the largest school districts in the state that has 22 high schools.
Even though it had a 4A-sized enrollment with 722 students, Faith Family was moved from 4A to 5A in realignment by the UIL and was placed in District 13-5A for basketball. That district includes seven Dallas ISD schools — Adamson, Hillcrest, Thomas Jefferson, Molina, South Oak Cliff, Sunset and W.T. White — and that DEC originally found Faith Family and its coaches guilty of recruiting violations, a lack of transparency and withholding information before the matter was sent on to the UIL.
Mozley said that a factor in Faith Family leaving the UIL was the fact that beyond the current transfers, the school had been told that previous transfers who had been approved by a past district executive committee were going to be reviewed as well.
Faith Family is taking the same path as now-defunct charter school Prime Prep Academy did in 2012. Prime Prep, which was co-founded by NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders, left the UIL after future NBA players Jordan Mickey and Emmanuel Mudiay and two other elite recruits were ruled ineligible for transferring for athletic purposes.
Faith Family’s boys basketball program has never been found guilty of any UIL violations but has faced backlash across the state while building a dynasty with many elite recruits. Faith Family’s boys roster included NBA champion Jordan Walsh of the Boston Celtics and marquee recruits T.J. Caldwell (now at Ole Miss), Doryan Onwuchekwa (now at Georgia Tech) and JT Toppin (now at Texas Tech).
“It was definitely a concern on the part of Faith Family to be put in a district with nothing but Dallas schools and watch how this situation has unfolded with our girls basketball program,” said Austin-based attorney Tiger Hanner, who represents Faith Family. “What’s to keep the same entity from going after our boys basketball program and our other programs. You don’t want to sit here and be paranoid, but the reality is if you have basically gutted one of our programs, how many more programs are we going to stand here and watch you try to dismantle.”
Besides basketball, Faith Family also competes in soccer and rugby, but rugby wasn’t a UIL sport.
Faith Family said that leaving the UIL won’t affect the state funding that it receives as a charter school.
On Oct. 30, the UIL’s state executive committee suspended Robinson, Creel and Jones for two years for recruiting violations. That is one year short of the maximum penalty allowed.
The charter school was banned from the playoffs for this season after being found guilty of recruiting violations, a lack of transparency and withholding information. Faith Family would have been a heavy favorite to win a state title in Class 5A Division II if all of its transfers had been ruled eligible.
“There was zero evidence of recruiting,” Hanner said. “What is really troubling is the only ‘evidence’ of recruiting is that approximately 18 students transferred to Faith Family to play basketball. There was not one email, one text message, one anything of anyone ever recruiting. Not a phone call to anyone asking them to transfer to Faith Family. There is speculation.”
It was revealed at the UIL SEC hearing that 18 players have transferred to Faith Family for girls basketball. Testimony at the SEC meeting showed that the transfers only started to come in after Robinson, a four-time state champion, was hired away from national powerhouse DeSoto and started work at Faith Family on April 4.
“Faith Family hired what I think is unquestionably the best girls coach in the state of Texas. With that came a lot of publicity,” Hanner said. “Every time [The Dallas Morning News] ran an article, more kids came, because as an open-enrollment charter school, anybody in DISD can transfer there.
“There are a couple of problems in the system with the UIL. Number one, they are going to declare ineligible any student that they perceive transferred there for athletic purposes. Faith Family is committed to bringing the best of the best across the board. You’re going to punish kids that want to come to our school because we’re trying to bring excellence.”
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