Harper Dunn's transfer to Academy hits a major stumbling block

The path for the state’s highest profile girls basketball recruit to play varsity basketball at Albuquerque Academy has hit a significant roadblock.

The New Mexico Activities Association has denied Harper Dunn’s hardship petition to play for the Chargers next season, the Journal has learned. The disagreement between the NMAA and the Dunn family may lead to a district courtroom.

Dunn, who is entering her junior year, has already enrolled at Academy, a private school, after transferring from tiny Class 1A Corona earlier this summer. One of the arguments that was made by Academy in its hardship petition on behalf of Dunn to the NMAA is that Corona may not have a girls basketball team for the 2025-26 season.

“The Hardship Review Committee … has determined that, unless Corona High School does not have a girls basketball program this school year, a hardship does not exist,” according to a letter from the NMAA, signed by Executive Director Dusty Young and addressed to Academy Athletic Director Taryn Bachis.

This means Dunn could have to wait until November, just before the start of basketball season, to know whether Corona will field a girls team and whether she could immediately play varsity basketball for Academy.

Dunn also plays volleyball, though basketball is her spotlight sport. The 6-foot-6 Dunn has nearly 30 Division I offers from some of the top women’s basketball programs in America.

The NMAA, citing bylaws 6.6.2.D and 6.6.2.E in its handbook, said she would be eligible to play only sub-varsity competitions (i.e. junior varsity) in volleyball and basketball during the 2025-26 school year — if Corona has varsity squads in either or both of those sports. Corona will have a varsity volleyball squad this year, meaning Dunn is not eligible to play varsity volleyball at Academy.

The NMAA, in the letter to Academy which the Journal obtained, said “if Ms. Dunn had enrolled in the public high school in the attendance zone assigned to her father’s residence in Albuquerque” — in this case, Valley — “she would be eligible to participate in varsity sports at that school immediately.”

In short, Dunn’s transfer has a string attached because it involves a private school.

And this is one of the family’s disagreements with the NMAA, as the Dunns desire explanation and clarification as to why her transfer to a private school is being treated differently than if she were transferring to another public school, especially since she has changed residences.

Young, when reached Thursday, declined comment.

Blair Dunn, Harper’s father, said the family’s next step is to go up the chain again, to the NMAA Appeals Review Committee.

“This is the best move, to go through the NMAA’s next process,” he told the Journal.

If the NMAA denies the family and Academy at the next appeal level, the case could end up in a courtroom.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Blair Dunn said, asked if that was possible, or even probable. Dunn, an attorney, was the Libertarian Party nominee for attorney general in 2018.

Harper Dunn has been playing basketball in Corona since the eighth grade. She was living with her grandparents during the school year on a ranch about 20 miles from the town.

Reputable academic schools like Stanford and Duke are circling her in the recruiting process, her father said, and he wants his daughter to be at a rigorous academic school like Academy, and feels like they have the right to enroll her at Academy without Harper being punished.

“We’re hoping to get some further illumination from the Appeals Committee as to why they are treating these private schools differently,” Blair Dunn said. “Why is it legally permissible and why is it there (in the NMAA bylaws)?”

Blair Dunn wants to know why public school-to-public school transfers are adjudicated differently. He cited another high-profile transfer, George Smith. Smith, a standout multi-sport athlete at Robertson High School in Las Vegas, New Mexico, transferred earlier this year to Sandia High. And he is varsity eligible.

“What’s the justification for treating those two kids differently?” he asked.

Whether Corona fields a girls basketball team has become an integral part of Harper Dunn’s fate, based on the wording in the NMAA’s letter to the family — which places the girls who attend Corona under a spotlight they didn’t ask to receive.

“It is absolutely penal to these girls,” Blair Dunn said. “Not just to Harper, but to these girls in Corona.”