Juan renews Catholic League volley tournament

By Ron Brocato
Clarion Herald

Thirteen is the lucky number for the return of the Catholic League volleyball tournament, canceled in 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Academy of the Sacred Heart (ASH) head coach and tournament director Jay Jay Juan has put together a schedule of 13 teams for the Sept. 16-17 tournament to be held at two sites. Among the entries are three reigning state champions and one runner-up.

Division I state champion Dominican and Sacred Heart will co-host the matches to be played beginning at 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 16 and at 9 a.m. the following day. Three side-by-side courts will be set up at ASH. Sept. 17 matches begin at 9 a.m., with the final match at 2 p.m. at both sites.

The schedule appears on the school’s website, www.ashrosary.org

The entries include eight teams from archdiocesan schools and five from Catholic schools in the Lafayette and Lake Charles dioceses. They include Division III state champion Archbishop Hannan and Division IV titleist Notre Dame of Crowley.

The local teams come from Archbishop Chapelle, Mount Carmel, Cabrini, St. Charles Catholic, St. Scholastica, Ursuline, Dominican, Hannan and co-host ASH. Visiting schools are 2020 Division IV runner-up Teurlings Catholic, St. Louis, Sacred Heart of Grand Coteau, Catholic of New Iberia and Notre Dame.

Although they won’t meet each other in the tournament, Dominican and Mount Carmel will display their unbeaten talent over the two days. Dominican won its first four matches of the season, and Mount Carmel opened with a 5-0 record. They face off in a District 7-I match on Oct. 12 at MCA.

Since Ashley Blink arrived in 2021 as Chapelle’s new coach, the Chipmunks have made rapid improvement in their play and may prove to be a threat for the two district giants. Chapelle has won its first eight matches.

Juan’s Cardinals at ASH are showing the potential that has provided the Uptown school with 14 state championships over the years. Tall and talented, the Cardinals have won nine of their first 10 outings.

The eight schools from the metro area have a combined 40-8 record in early matches.

Rummel-Shaw renewed

We will see the return of an old rivalry on Sept. 16 when the two Jefferson Parish parochial schools clash at Shaw.

With Hank Tierney back as head coach of the Archbishop Shaw Eagles, the off-and-on rivalry with Archbishop Rummel may once again be one of prep football’s most contested in the near future.

Since Tierney left the school following the 2001 season, Rummel has dominated the series. The treasured megaphone, earned by the victor each year, has been gathering dust on a shelf in Rummel’s coaches’ office for the past 11 years.

In Tierney’s absence while doing coaching stints at West Jefferson and Ponchatoula, Rummel has won 12 times in 14 meetings, including the last 11. And although the Raiders lead the series that began in 1964 by a comfortable 35-23 margin, it wasn’t always that way.

During Tierney’s tenure, Shaw was the master of the series, winning 14 of 19 games. Two of Rummel’s three victories were games won by forfeit.

When the two schools first met in 1964, the game between the fledglings (won by Rummel, 26-19) was merely a footnote in the daily newspapers. The big story was Ridgewood winning the Class B state title.

Today, Ridgewood no longer fields a football team, while the “Battle for the Megaphone” is the city’s fourth-longest continuous rivalry, behind those of Jesuit vs. Holy Cross (100 years), Newman vs. Country Day (73 years) and Newman vs. St. Martin’s (71 years).

East Jefferson vs. West Jefferson is a rivalry that began in 1955, but for several years during Henry Rando’s years as EJ’s head coach, games between the Warriors and Buccaneers did not take place. The two schools were in separate districts.

New “Selects”

The ridiculous 11-team Division I playoff bracket that has determined the Select schools’ champion since 2013 will expand to 33 teams this year. Their power rankings will determine which nine will fall short of a playoff berth.

Whether the change becomes a permanent structure for future playoffs depends on a vote of the state high school principals at their January 2023 meeting. But the football brackets have been locked in for the December Prep Classic.

Division I looks like this: The original 10 teams are Brother Martin, Jesuit, Holy Cross, Rummel, St. Augustine, Catholic (Baton Rouge), St. Paul’s, John Curtis, Scotlandville and Byrd. They  will be joined by Acadiana, Alexandria,  Bonnabel, Captain Shreve, Carencro, Comeaux, East Jefferson, Karr, Grace King,  Hammond, Huntington, John Ehret, Higgins, Lafayette, Liberty, Northwood, Pineville, Riverdale, Southwood, Tioga, Warren Easton, West Jefferson and Woodlawn (B.R.).

The 33 schools will compete for 24 playoff spots. Archbishop Shaw will leave D-I to compete in D-II.

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