The second weekend of prep football was action-filled as local Catholic schools clashed with non-district opponents. At left, St. Paul’s Cade Manint tugs at the facemask of Jesuit running back Brayton Whittington (24) during their game at Tad Gormley Stadium on Sept. 7. The two teams battled to the end, with Jesuit  pulling out a 34-24 victory to gain its first victory.

Thirteen teams, including Division IV state champion Pope John Paul II, will converge on Dominican High School Sept. 14-15 to meet in the Catholic League Volleyball Tournament. Co-hosted by Ursuline Academy, the tournament will be played exclusively at Dominican this year, according to the event’s organizer, Jay Jay Juan, athletic director and head volleyball coach at Ursuline.

Was it really that much of a surprise?  After years and years of out-of-town owners, and years and years of empty seats, our Triple-A baseball team is departing, no later than September 2021. That’s when the Baby Cakes’ lease with the Superdome Commission expires.

On the day I was born, the dreadnoughts on Ford Island’s battleship row were still afloat. Eight months later, the infamous day that the Imperial Japanese Navy sent the might of the Pacific fleet to the bottom of the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor, the United States was thrown into a world war it had tried to avoid.

In his appearance before the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation Quarterback Club, former Saints right tackle and rookie play-by-play man Zach Strief answered the question before it was even asked.

Sunday night, the purple-and-gold sky will either be falling or there will be unbridled optimism by a somewhat fickle LSU fan base. Their Tigers open the season Sunday night against the University of Miami in Arlington, Texas. 

Tim Rebowe seems to have found the winning combination of athletes, bolstered by 23 who played high school football at Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, to lead his Nicholls State football team to another productive season in the Southland Conference.

The management of WLAE television last week announced that Part III of their award-winning documentary, “Glory Days: The Catholic League of New Orleans,” is in production with a target air date of December.

Guy Lecompte and Nathaniel Jones have set goals on and off the football field for their athletes. Character building is the more important of the two.

The following are home match schedules for New Orleans-area Catholic high school volleyball teams through Oct. 11. The home team is listed first:

Games kick off at 7 p.m. unless otherwise noted. (D) – District game. WEEK 1 Thursday, Aug. 30 Jesuit vs. Warren Easton at Tad Gormley Stadium. De La Salle vs. South Lafourche at Pan American Stadium.

On a recent local TV show, Tulane University’s director of athletics Troy Dannen detailed one of the reasons why he hired men’s basketball coach Mike Dunleavy. “Our basketball program needed shock paddles,” said Dannen.

As schools begin to open their doors for the 2018-19 session, sports officials from all corners of the state have spent the last week preparing for their roles as facilitators of the games and stewards of the rules.

It was the last hurrah before the start of the football season. My wife Robin and I headed to Europe, a sojourn we had planned for a few years. Rob likes to cruise, meet new friends, check out some history, and she says she even likes spending time with me. Go figure.

Its gymnasium is small and antiquated, and there is no facility near campus to run or jump, but  that didn’t stop St. Katharine Drexel Prep from winning division championships in basketball and girls’ track and field during the 2017-18 school year. The school’s athletic department will receive the coveted Eddie Robinson Award at the All-State Sugar Bowl’s Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Aug. 4. Five years ago, the school, then known as Xavier Prep,was saved from extinction  by former students whose funding efforts reopened the school under its current  name.

In the midst of an unbeaten season in 1998, Tulane’s head  coach Tommy Bowden and LSU director of athletics Joe Dean were guests of the New Orleans Quarterback Club. Bowden was taking questions from the audience: “Why doesn’t LSU play Tulane in football?” Bowden simply bent the microphone over to Dean. The crowd chuckled. The question at the time seemed relevant. Especially when the Green Wave, in 1997 and 1998, won 19 games and lost four. Jog ahead 20 years. Tulane director of athletics Troy Dannen said LSU and the Green Wave will not play baseball in the 2019 season. Dannen said it is likely the clubs will play one game, the Wally Pontiff Classic at the Shrine on Airline, in 2020.

High school sports in New Orleans are steeped in lore and tradition. One of the sustainable traditions in this city’s Catholic environment is the archdiocese’s annual CYO basketball tournament, which, in December, will tip the ball for the 65th year. Age 65 is a year most men and women retire. Hopefully, that won’t hold true for this storied tournament, which is the longest continuously running high school tournament in Louisiana history and one of the longest prep tournaments in the U.S. Begun as a football “bowl” game in 1943, the CYO morphed its annual product into a basketball tournament in 1950. Now sponsored by the Allstate Sugar Bowl, the CYO Classic has taken place every year through 1966, and was revitalized in 1971 after a four-year hiatus. 

For LSU softball signee Shelby Wickersham and Delgado Community College’s new slugger, Stephen Klein, their senior seasons ended all too soon. Wickersham, Mount Carmel’s most dominant pitcher since Meghan Patterson ruled the Cubs’ mound from 2008-10, had her stellar final campaign end in the state tournament’s Division I semifinal  game with a loss to district archrival Dominican. Klein, who pitched and batted De La Salle to an outstanding 28-7 record, was eliminated from the Division II baseball competition in the quarterfinals of the playoffs. But two things the recently graduated athletes have in common are their selections as the best players in their respective sports and Most Valuable Players on the Clarion Herald’s Elite softball and baseball teams.

At the LSU caravan stop in Metairie, the official line was transfer quarterback Joe Burrow has to come to fall camp and win the job. But, behind the curtain, there’s always a back story. And, that story is LSU coaches are very impressed with the former Ohio State Buckeye. They are impressed with his skills and his leadership abilities. Perhaps, for one of the most offensively starved fan bases in the Southeastern Conference, there is light.

Once upon a time, when there were just three classifications of high schools (2A, 1A and B), a local league was formed among the metro area’s smaller schools. Because schools from the three parishes of Orleans, Jefferson and St. Bernard were bisected by the Mississippi River, the fledgling was known as the Riverside League and began formal play in 1939.