Football seasons have prevailed through storms of all kinds

By Ron Brocato, Sports Editor
Clarion Herald

Southeast Louisiana has forever been the catcher’s mitt of adverse weather, and it appears that 2021 may be no different as the tropics open around us. As of Sunday, Aug. 15, a system with the unlikely name “Grace” was barreling toward the Gulf on a dubious course aimed at our toe of the boot.

But that comes with the territory, and we have been able to withstand these meteorological sucker punches for more than a century. But it seems they come at the start of football season.

History has not been kind in that respect, as we see:      

1915: There was no viable early-warning system in place when this unnamed hurricane plowed into News Orleans on Sept. 29 with sustained winds measured at 125 mph. Citizens were caught by surprise as areas adjacent to Lake Pontchartrain were quickly inundated. Parts of Carrollton and the eastern part of the city were under 8 feet of water at their deepest points because of levee failures caused by an underdeveloped drainage system.

The local news reported that every building in the city sustained damage. The clock on St. Louis Cathedral stopped at 5:50 p.m. The Presbytere on Jackson Square lost its cupola, and four small steamers and several coal barges sank in the Mississippi River.

The winds caused widespread power outages. The city lost its telecommunication facilities with more than 8,000 telephones out of commission. Damage to the city’s power station disabled house and street lighting. And rail service was suspended.

Yet, the prep football season continued among the city’s four primary high schools: Warren Easton, Jesuit, Newman (Manual Training) and Rugby Academy.

The highlight of the short season was a Thanksgiving Day game pitting the two largest schools, Easton vs. Jesuit, at Heinemann Park. It was reported that the crowd of 3,000 was the largest to ever see a high school game in New Orleans. And following the 6-6 tie, the city’s newspapers begged for a rematch to settle the outcome.

That rematch was a disappointment for Jesuit followers. Played three weeks later for the benefit of the city’s Doll and Toy Fund, a smaller crowd of 2,600 watched Easton win, 26-7. The charities divided just $1,500.

1947: The fourth hurricane of this active season made landfall southeast of New Orleans on Sept. 19 as a strong Category 2 with winds of 110 mph. The yet-to-be named system weakened to a tropical storm later that day, and then to a tropical depression on Sept. 20, but not before strong winds over Lake Pontchartrain caused water to over-top the levees, leaving some lakefront streets inundated with “waist-deep” water.

The storm, which struck before dawn and abated at about 9:30 a.m., arrived during the first weekend of the prep football season. And although its gale destroyed the lighthouse at the mouth of the 17th Street Canal, caused a breach at the canal near Metairie Road, and flooded areas of Bonnabel Place, Eastern New Orleans and Highway 11, prep football resumed on Sept. 22.

Nicholls defeated Metairie High 31-6 before a reported attendance of 1,550 rain-soaked spectators at City Park Stadium. A full nine-game season was completed without further interruption.

1965: The first half of the decade incurred destruction from three hurricanes, but the Atlantic hurricane season was one of the least active, the media reported, with just six disturbances growing to tropical storm intensity. One, however, was Hurricane Betsy, which pounded southeast Louisiana on Sept. 9.

Betsy became the most expensive storm to date, causing more than $1 billion in damage from its 150 mph winds, accompanying tornadoes and high tides. Once again, the city’s levees failed and the local parishes were swamped with floodwaters for days. The scale of the storm caused Betsy to be retired from the National Weather Service’s named-storms list.

But again, high school football endured. The LHSAA extended the season one week. Stadiums at East and West Jefferson lost their lights, but Newman and St. Martin’s opened their seasons successfully eight days after the storm, and the others soon followed a week later.

1978: A different kind of storm interrupted the football season for several Orleans Parish public school teams when the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO), the first Louisiana teachers’ union to integrate, went on strike in a successful effort to win a collective bargaining agreement.

Among the 3,500 educators to walk out were coaches from several public high schools.

During the 12 days of the strike, Nicholls, Landry, Booker T. Washington, McDonogh 35 and Clark had early-season games postponed. Just one – Landry – made the playoffs, but was quickly eliminated by St. Augustine, 29-6.

2005: And then there was Katrina, the most devastating and costly hurricane to the present day. Records showed that flaws in the federal levee protection system caused the flooding.

The metro area’s high schools were among the victims. The fall sports seasons were sporadic as schools suffered massive damage, and students were spread wide and far.

Just 15 schools managed to field football teams for less than a handful of makeshift games. The LHSAA allowed any school that could field a team to be eligible for postseason playoffs. Because of heavy damage, St. Augustine and Archbishop Shaw were unable to compete. The campuses at Holy Cross and Archbishop Hannan were destroyed. And it took nearly a decade for most to return to normalcy, but all survived.

2020: And then the coronavirus struck and life took another bizarre turn as our faith and determination were again challenged by unforeseen circumstances. But again, an iron will overcame the travesty, and prep sports once again marched forward.

Today we face a Delta variant of COVID-19 at the start of a new school year and sports season, for which we will have to re-adjust our lives.

What we don’t need is another test of resilience from the tropics or above.

rbrocato@clarionherald.org