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By Ron Brocato
Clarion Herald
The principal of a small Class 2A school in North Louisiana concocted such a hair-brained proposal for the 2021 LHSAA Convention that, after the executive committee turned it into a usable item, it made the business agenda for a vote in April.
Rewritten and refined by committee principals Ryan Gallagher of Brother Martin and Shannon Foolkes of Sam Houston, Proposal No. 6 would amend the association’s bylaws to allow a principal of a “select” school to change his or her school’s designation to “non-select” to compete in a different playoff bracket.
Am I kidding? No. It’s written in black ink on a white page.
The proposal was originally designed by the aforementioned small school principal to allow her school, which had been classified as “select” for playoff purposes, to compete against public schools in a 32-team bracket. Otherwise, her school would have been placed in a smaller bracket against the best non-public schools in that class/division.
It didn’t fly, explained LHSAA executive director Eddie Bonine, because it did not meet the criteria the association’s constitution called for: The proposal focused on just one group of schools, which would have circumvented the entire system of classification.
But the committee must have liked the idea, in general, because the new authors – Gallagher (a select school principal in Southeast Louisiana) and Foolkes (a non-select school principal on the other end of the state in Moss Bluff) – gave their administrative counterparts a proposal that both sides feel is fair for every school.
Formally, the proposal reads: “A ‘select’ school, defined as a private or public school that has an established academic criteria that it uses in order to determine the admission and/or retention of its students, may choose to change its designation to non-select in each class (from 5A-1A for football and through C for other varsity sports). For the change to be effective, the member school must notify the executive director in writing no later than June 30 following reclassification.”
The proposal goes on to read: “The designation of ‘select’ or ‘non-select’ shall be binding and remain in effect until the next classification year,” which takes place every other year.
Applies to all sports
Of course, the largest block of schools defined as select are either Catholic or private schools.
If passed (and the key is by a simple majority vote), the new rule will apply to all sports in which the member school competes. That includes boys’ and girls’ competition.
“The committee thought, why not change the rule for all classifications and see how it goes?” Bonine said. “Since it was published, a number of principals have been trying to undo the split. Remember, it was about 50 schools short of passing last year with a two-thirds vote.”
But, as a proposed change to administrative bylaws, this would require a simple majority to pass.
Bonine said some principals were under the impression that this proposal was his way of reuniting all schools in a singular playoff system. But, he said, he’s out of that business after being raked across hot coals when he last tried to return unity and sanity to the LHSAA. Instead, he threw the issue squarely onto the co-authors’ shoulders.
Does he think this proposal will get past the non-select hardliners who run the public schools? Neither he nor LHSAA president David Federico (Ecole Classique) is that naïve. But, there are principals on both sides of the aisles who would like to give select schools the opportunity to “opt out” of the current playoff structure. Doing so would create a more competitive balance among schools by allowing them to play against more and different schools in the postseason. It would also strengthen the 32-team brackets by eliminating less-competitive teams that lose early-round games by astronomical deficits.
It should have the blessings of principals of the seven-team Catholic League (District 9-5A) in which all its members qualify for the 11-team Division I playoff.
Just last fall, Jesuit played Brother Martin twice. St. Augustine and Holy Cross met in district play on Nov. 21, and again in the first round of the D-I playoffs a week later. And, district-mates Archbishop Shaw and John Curtis would have met twice had not Shaw yielded the win to its opponent. A 33-6 loss to Curtis made a second game senseless.
Contending that 32-team brackets are too large, Bonine wanted to know when was the last time a No. 16 seed beat a No. 1?
I looked it up: in 2015 No. 17 West St. John upset No. 1 Many, 34-30, in the Class 2A playoffs and No. 17 Ponchatoula ousted No. 1 West Monroe, 28-21, in the 5A second round of the 5A post-season games.
Prior to that year, it hadn’t been done since 2011. So I get his point.