Tilton girls basketball coach Tara Brisson knows high school athletes can carry star power. She’s seen it with her own players, most notably 2024 graduate Ahnay Adams (New Bedford, Mass.).
At first, fans sometimes came up to Adams while she watched a Tilton softball game and asked for pictures of the Miami-bound star point guard. But Adams soon started receiving messages on social media from people who wanted to use her name to help promote their products. Right before Tilton competed in this year's National Prep School Championship, someone sent Adams a pair of shoes and asked if she would wear them as a marketing tool. Adams did not.
“She'll have a lot of people that message her and say, ‘Hey, can you wear our clothing, or can you do this, or do you want to be part of our brand?’ And from my experience anyway, with that, she and I have always just said no,” Brisson said.
Adams is just one example of name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities reaching the high school levels. The space doesn’t grab headlines like the collegiate NIL battleground, but teenagers across the country are signing deals. According to Business of College Sports, 39 state athletic associations have laid out policies allowing high school students to profit off of their NIL, including all six New England states.
NEPSAC has also developed its own guidelines, with a small contingent of athletes under agreements spanning several sports. Leo Papile, founder of the Boston Amateur Basketball Club, says one player in his grassroots program has an NIL deal with a clothing brand.
“The horses have left the barn — it’s common,” Papile said on the HoopWise Podcast.
Over the last two years, the NEPSAC executive board has met occasionally with NIL educator Dr. Scott Grant, founder of Triple Threat Leadership. Grant has extensive knowledge of the space, particularly at the high school level, and helped give feedback and answer questions as NEPSAC developed its NIL policy. Grant also led a workshop for NEPSAC athletic directors, athletic trainers and coaches.
“A lot of times there's fears around what you're seeing at the college level, and then people are like, ‘Oh, we don't want that to happen at the high school level,’ which is completely understandable,” Grant said.
“A lot of times [with] the policies — they want to make sure that they're keeping everyone safe from any sort of negative interactions that occur.”
There are significant differences between NIL in college versus high school. NIL rules are dictated by individual state associations (or NEPSAC) and not a national governing body like the NCAA. This means states have more control over how they’d like to regulate NIL, though it also means rules can be confusing state-to-state. NEPSAC schools come from all over (and outside) New England, but since they do not fall under the governance of state associations, NEPSAC is free to create its own rules.
Another important difference: NIL payments in college are dominated by collectives — organizations often made of boosters and other supporters who raise and funnel funds to athletes. According to Opendorse’s 2024 NIL report, a whopping 81.6 percent of NIL money — estimated to be a $1.17 billion industry in 2024 — comes from collectives.
These groups currently do not exist at the New England prep or high school level.
“Most state associations have specific policy clauses that do not allow student athletes to monetize from collectives or boosters in certain ways,” Grant said. “A lot of times, that can be tied to a recruiting bylaw that they have, but most of the time, many of them outlaw collective integration.”
NEPSAC does not make its bylaws available to the public. However, the general sense is that its guidelines are loose enough to allow athletes to explore NIL opportunities, but deter the formation of collectives. Brisson, also a NEPSAC executive board member, said the group looked at policies in other states for guidance when crafting its own rules.
One way to maintain such a boundary is by shutting off any potential connection between a school and an NIL partner. The MIAA has such wording in its bylaws. Here’s a piece of its NIL policy from the MIAA handbook:
“Student-athletes are prohibited from making any reference to and will not otherwise use or authorize others to use the logos, insignia, or identifying marks of a member school of the MIAA, and/or any MIAA or member school event, game or championship when engaging in any NIL activity. Student-athletes may not endorse or promote any third-party entities, goods, or services during MIAA school team or MIAA tournaments. Student-athletes may not wear the apparel or display the logo, insignia, or identifying mark of an NIL partner during any MIAA school team or MIAA tournament activities.”
Grant added that outside of the megastars of high school, most top athletes are signing what he called “financial in-kind” NIL deals. This could be free gear or a discount at a store in exchange for a social media post or public promotion, similar to what Adams encountered.
Adams and Brisson would debrief when she received an NIL offer, and Brisson noticed people were often surprised when Adams declined opportunities.
“She was prime real estate for people to say, ‘OK, we can take advantage of this kid, and we'll be able to use her to help us,’” Brisson said. “I wasn't shocked. I think more people were shocked that she said no, because if there was money associated with it, I think people automatically assumed this kid… is going to want our money, so they'll definitely do it, right?”
But there is room for high schoolers to make big bucks, as Papile has heard with his BABC team on the Adidas 3SSB travel circuit.
“I was told there was a team in our league that had accumulated $800,000 between grades 9 and 11 in NIL deals already,” he said. “The team doesn’t pay them, but there are people around them who see them as prospects, and it’s legal.”
Grant and Brisson share the concern that kids and families don’t always know what they’re signing up for. Is the NIL contract going to put their NCAA eligibility in jeopardy? What are the implications of this taxable income on families, and how does that affect college financials like FAFSA forms and Pell Grants? Can a player be sued if they don’t uphold their end of the deal?
“You hear horror stories like that, so you try to use them as teaching points,” Grant said. “The whole goal with all of this is: How do we move forward in a safe and compliant way to ensure kids don't lose their eligibility and don't negatively impact their future in any way, shape or form — not just their future athletic opportunities, but their future in general?”
Right now, the NIL market is small for New England-area athletes. But people see the explosion at the college level and fear that things could spiral out of control quickly. Grant and Brisson alluded to worries that when NIL partners have had enough of the college landscape, they see high school as an untapped source due to the sheer volume of athletes.
“Let's say it's a website or a marketplace, — the more deals that they can have student athletes do between brands and student athletes, the more percentages they're gonna get from those deals, right?” Grant said. “So the more kids that they can get signed up for their services, the more brands that they can get signed up for their services, even if they're in smaller amounts — I mean, you take 20 to 30 percent of a transaction, and you have 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 transactions, that’s a lot of money.
“So I think what companies now are saying is, all right, there's 500,000 college student-athletes. There's 8 million, technically, at the high school level. Why would we not go after the high school level, right? Lawyers, sports agents, they're all saying, well, there's more in the coffer at the high school level than at the college level.”
That’s why it’s become important to build clear guidelines and educate everyone in the high school sports ecosystem about NIL rules.
“First and foremost, the thing that has to be in [a new policy] is protection of the student athlete, right?” Brisson said. “We don't want them to give up their name, image and likeness — if you're a high-level recruit, that's all you have right now at this point, right? That's what's continuing to propel you forward. So anything that we can do in there to protect the student athlete, first and foremost. If that means that the NEPSAC loses out, or a school loses out, or somebody loses out, that's OK, as long as the student-athlete is protected.”
