BATON ROUGE — After more than a decade
of debate and several votes to keep the status quo, Louisiana High
School Athletic
Associations principals approved what amounts to a public/private
school split for the football playoffs at Friday’s general
business meeting.
The proposal passed Friday will go into
effect next season. The regular season will remain the same but create
two new postseason
divisions for “select” schools — defined as all non-public,
charter, university lab, magnet and dual-curriculum schools that
include at least 25 percent of their enrollment as
select-admission students who do not live in the designated attendance
zone.
Select schools in Classes 5A-3A will form Division I for the playoffs, while those in Classes 2A and 1A will comprise Division
II. Non-select/public schools will compete in Classes 5A-1A.
In Southwest Louisiana, private schools
St. Louis Catholic and Hamilton Christian will be designated select
schools, with
St. Louis going into Division I and Hamilton into Division II for
the postseason. Washington-Marion, which has a dual-curriculum
enrollment, does not meet the 25 percent threshold and will be
grouped with the non-select/public schools, said W-M Principal
Robert Pete.
St. Louis and Hamilton voted against the split. The vote was 206 votes in favor of the split, 119 against, and largely went
according to partisan lines with most public schools voting in favor and most private schools voting against.
“I voted no because I don’t like to split us up. I think kids are all the same,” said St. Louis Principal Ted Nixon. “I think
when we split ourselves up we become weaker. When you look at Division I, we are going to have a tough road to hoe. We’ll
see how it works. We are going into unchartered waters.”
Enrollment size has been the lone criterion used for separating LHSAA schools during the organization’s history.
That will change as a result of increasing backlash against the dominance of private schools at the Superdome Prep Classic.
In the 2012 edition, seven of the 10 participants — and four of the five champions, were private schools. John Curtis Christian
has appeared in 17 consecutive championship games.
The Patriots, and fellow 2A superpower
Evangel Christian, will have a rougher time extending that streak. In a
handout from
Commissioner Kenny Henderson showing how the schools could be
separated, Curtis and Evangel were two of the smallest three
Division I schools. They voluntarily moved up to Class 3A during
fall redistricting and will be grouped with 5A schools with
the likes of as last year’s champion Archbishop Rummel, Jesuit and
St. Paul’s.
Issues to be worked out include determining which select schools qualify for the playoffs, and which dual-curriculum schools
will be classified as select schools.
LHSAA bylaws calling for 32-team football playoff brackets were left unchanged, but there could be as few as 27 non-select
schools in Class 1A.
Also approved were proposals calling
for a return to the old format for basketball playoffs, with separate
championship tournaments
for boys and girls. Each tournament will host semifinal and final
rounds. Sites will be determined by bid this summer.
Last season and this season, three regional sites host all semifinal-round games, with all championship games played at one
site.
The Class 5A baseball playoffs will
have a new format beginning in 2014, with a single game in the
bi-district round followed
by best 2-of-3 series in the regional and quarterfinal rounds. The
state tournament will be reduced from eight teams to four,
but remain single elimination.