Once a pioneer for HS transfers, Jeff McInnis says ‘It’s just a different time now’
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Star athletes are leaving traditional high schools for more exposure. Is it worth it?
Are high school student-athletes taking risks by leaving their neighborhood schools for new schools that promise more travel and exposure?
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NC athletes are leaving home for pop-up schools that focus on basketball over academics
Once a pioneer for HS transfers, Jeff McInnis says ‘It’s just a different time now’
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Jeff McInnis was one of the early wave of Charlotte players to transfer to a high school powerhouse, leaving for Oak Hill (Va.) Academy, which was a pioneer in taking elite talent from across the nation and putting them on one team.
McInnis won a 1991 state championship at West Charlotte and then left for Oak Hill, forming one of the best teams in high school history, with Jerry Stackhouse and two other future NBA players. The 1992-93 Oak Hill team finished 36-0, won by an average of 32 points and was named mythical national champion by USA Today.
But unlike many of these new pop-up schools with online classes or classes somewhere else, Oak Hill is a boarding school, with traditional classes in a brick-and-mortar building — and the national schedule.
McInnis, who played at North Carolina and in the NBA, now coaches at Lincolnton’s Combine Academy, which is Oak Hill-lite. He’s built a national program taking top regional talent, mostly from the Charlotte area. Combine’s players, for the most part, live on campus and attend school on campus. But McInnis sees the tides changing toward new alternative situations.
And he’s felt it personally. This season he lost three starters, including 5-star and top 10 national recruit Robert Dillingham - to a new school in California, Donda Prep, started by rapper Kanye West.
“It’s getting adventurous out here, and kind of different,” McInnis said. “High school is different than when I played. I wouldn’t do it. When I grew up, you dreamed of playing for West Charlotte. You wanted to go play for the school you grew up watching. I left West Charlotte to go to Oak Hill. That was the premier basketball school. It was legit. It’s just a different time now.”
This story was originally published February 4, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
