LHSAA principals again reject joint playoffs

Baton Rouge – Same old, same old.

At the annual meeting of the Louisiana High School Athletic Association in Baton Rouge today, high school principals failed to pass any proposal that would have re-created a unified playoff system for private and public schools in the sports of football, basketball, baseball and softball.

Thus, for the foreseeable future, those sports will continue to have separate playoffs for “select” (Catholic, private and charter schools) and for “non-select (public) schools.

The voting results were a blow to Catholic school principals across the state, especially in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, who had urged the LHSAA to end the split playoff system that has been in existence in football since 2012 and in the other three sports since 2013.

The LHSAA’s arcane voting procedures involved a series of proposals, each of which either was rejected or failed to reach the two-thirds majority needed for approval.

The closest the group came to ending the split was on a vote to create a new Class 6A, for the schools with the highest enrollments as well as schools that would agree to “play up” to that top level.
Although that proposal, which would have created jointed playoffs in all four sports, passed by a vote of 179-165, it fell short of garnering the necessary two-thirds majority.

After that vote, the principals voted on whether or not to create joint playoffs in each of the four sports. But in four separate votes, the principals voted down joint playoffs. None of the votes was close.