New LHSAA president is on a mission to reunite

The 2014-15 school year will be a pivotal period for the Louisiana High School Athletic Association, somewhat in disarray thanks to the majority of member principals and their desire to separate themselves from the minority.

The association’s management and its executive committee have until the waning days of January 2015 to convince a few hundred hard-line public school principals that it is imperative that they curtail their ambitions to create separate playoffs for public and non-public schools in sports beyond football.

And no one knows this better than the LHSAA’s new president, Victor Bonnaffee.

As the association’s first non-public school president in its 94-year history, this principal of Central Catholic of Morgan City is in a unique position.

Bonnaffee, a baseball coach at De La Salle before spending most of his career in secondary education as an Catholic school administrator, is on a mission to return harmony to the LHSAA by making it function in a bipartisan manner.

Not long ago, Bonnaffee was elected vice president by committee members. He moved into the president’s seat when its most recent leader, Todd Guice, was elevated from principal at Ouachita Parish High into a position in that system’s main office. Bonnaffee automatically took his place.

A presidential mandate
Asked what his main goal was as the association’s new face, Bonnaffee told me, “The No. 1 concern to me and the biggest challenge is to do all I can for unity; unity in keeping the executive committee together, unity in trying to get the entire membership to start coming together and focus as a body.”

Bonnaffee pointed out that for too many years, member principals were worried just about themselves and their own groups.

“We’ve got to come back to unity of purpose, unity of direction and unity of mission. To me, that’s going to be the challenge of what I have to try to be able to do,” he said.

At its summer meetings two weeks ago, the executive committee proclaimed its own unity in a statement to the membership that the group does not want to see any further split of sports between public and non-public schools beyond the split that already exists in football playoffs.

“That message shows a gigantic step by the executive committee, because we have now come together publicly and made a statement to the whole association,” Bonnaffee pointed out. “We came together to say that we are supporting the position of not having any further split than we have existing now.”

A few of the LHSAA’s top corporate sponsors, including its newest – the Allstate Sugar Bowl, which replaced State Farm Insurance as the big-money sponsor – included a clause in its contract that enables the sponsor to cancel the contract if there are radical changes in the LHSAA’s operation. That includes further separation of internal factions.

Bonnaffee says the picture is larger than a breach of contract in the eyes of a sponsor.

“The effects of what’s happening in this organization is greater than the Sugar Bowl contract,” he said.

“Some people, because of their roles or their position, understand the real details of how this organization runs. We have not been able to convincingly convey to our entire membership the seriousness if we do certain things, and the effects it will have on others.

“I don’t think we’ll ever get everybody in the LHSAA to totally support what we’re doing, but my goal would be to get everybody in the LHSAA to live with each other,” Bonnaffee continued.

And it all starts with a stable executive committee, which has thus far been an impossible task because of the very nature of the principals’ positions within their individual school systems.

Is stability possible?
“The press doesn’t understand the severity of the decision of turnover of principals in this association. Even on this committee, we spend time grooming people in roles and succession and the information we give them. Then, all of a sudden, they are brought up into their central offices, and we lose all that orientation, that in-service, and we have to start over from scratch with a new board member,” Bonnaffee explained.

“When I looked at the executive committee list to see who might become the next vice president, I saw that 18 principals on this list were not here five years ago, and only a few were here three years ago. That makes it very difficult for an organization to stay focused on its mission, to understand what we’re doing, and to appreciate it and then be able to support the action as a group,” he said.

One key issue that affects Catholic high schools has been the change of the definition of attendance zones.

By establishing a civil parish as a school’s attendance zone, a student maintains eligibility by attending a high school in his parish of residence, and if that student chooses a school in a neighboring parish, he or she is ineligible the first year.

Fortunately, the executive committee voted to allow schools which are operated by the same school system to be exempt from this new rule.

This change allows Catholic school students who continually attended the entire seventh and/or eighth grades in schools run by a diocese to attend a school of their choice in a neighboring parish if that high school is operated by the same diocese.

Thus, a Catholic elementary or middle school student who lives in Jefferson Parish may attend a Catholic high school in Orleans Parish (and vice versa) and be eligible to compete in athletics right away.

Ron Brocato can be reached at [email protected].