LHSAA mired in controversy as public, private rift grows

    A good week it was not for the Louisiana High School Athletic Association.
    On the Friday of the girls’ 4A state semifinal in Hammond, three teams were preparing for the game. Vandebilt Catholic and St. Michael took the court to warmup. In the meantime, Salmen’s girls and coaches waited for an anticipated court ruling in their favor.
    Moments later, it arrived. The 1st District Court of Appeal in Louisiana threw out a temporary restraining order won by the parents of a Vandebilt player who was ruled ineligible. Vandebilt and St. Michael’s were told to leave the court. Vandebilt never returned.
    Vandebilt Catholic, to its credit, asked the LHSAA to investigate the eligibility of the player before the playoffs.
    Why were the playoffs allowed to commence without an eligibility ruling on the Vandebilt player?
    Through no fault of its own, Salmen won the girls’ 4A championship, despite losing to Vandebilt Catholic in the quarterfinals.
    The following Tuesday, LHSAA executive director Kenny Henderson and principals and coaches on both sides of the proposed football playoff “split” appeared before a joint Senate/House subcommittee at the State Capitol in Baton Rouge.
    Subcommittee chair, Sen. Page Cortez, R-Lafayette, said the gathering was simply for “fact finding.”
    The testimony once again revealed the huge divide between public schools and their “select” enrollment school brethren. In January, LHSAA principals voted 206-119 to split the Louisiana state football playoffs. There would be five classes for traditional public schools and two for the others.
    Winnfield High School principal Jane Griffin, who spearheaded the proposal, told the subcommittee, “We don’t get to pick the fastest and the strongest.”
    Cortez said he wanted to focus on facts. Instead, from Griffin he got this nugget: “When a school is able to dominate, there is something going on.”
    Griffin didn’t expand on that comment.
    Parkview Baptist principal Don Green told the subcommittee that the proposal “has no data to support it.”
    “As far as recruiting violations, there’s nothing there,” said Green. “You can’t legislate integrity.”
    Henderson said the association was seeking an “independent opinion” to see if Proposal 18 had violated the association’s constitution. Henderson added, “If it did, I don’t see it staying.”
    Lutcher athletic director and head football coach Tim Detillier, a member of the executive committee, urged legislators to “help us find a solution; don’t force us.”
    Detillier then said something that everyone in the room could agree. “The LHSAA hangs in the balance,” he said.
    Two days later, I was in Monroe for the state basketball championships. As I updated on Twitter, I was messaged by a fan complaining that one of the prominent players in an upcoming game had transferred from one public school to another, and I should investigate.
    As I watched the players on the court, I thought to myself, “Is this what we’ve come to?”
    Then Country Day played Arcadia for the 1A championship. Country Day, a private school, rallied from 20 points down late in the third to win in overtime.
    Both coaches, Mike McGuire of Country Day and Marcus Jackson of Arcadia, were profuse in the compliments for the opposition. The sportsmanship on both sides was most welcomed.
    Ed Daniels is sports director of ABC26 WGNO. He can be reached at [email protected].