There’s no place like home or Catholic school sports

By Ron Brocato, Sports
Clarion Herald

In mid-August of 1997, I received a phone call from Clarion Herald executive editor Peter Finney Jr. offering me a position as a reporter.

At the time, I was the prep writer for the Lake Charles American Press, one of Louisiana’s few family-owned and managed newspapers.

The owners and editors were among the finest of their profession among Louisiana’s smaller daily newspapers, and I had 40 high schools in the southwest region of the state to cover over most of my 4 1/2 years there.

I was comfy living along the Calcasieu River in the little burgh of Westlake, but I confess that I stood out among the local citizenry.

I think I was the only person in the lake area who didn’t drive a pickup truck. I wore topsiders instead of mud boots in public. And I didn’t don a baseball cap to a three-star restaurant (there were no four-star dining places in the parish until the advent of casinos in southwest Louisiana).

When I wasn’t covering games (or the annual high school rodeo), I fed my furry friends that hung around my rural dwelling a gourmet meal of acorns  I gathered from City Park or dry corn, not realizing that when squirrel season opened, I had been preparing the locals with their share of fattened delicacies.

There was nothing like covering a football game next to the local cemetery in Basile only to have the stadium lights turned off before I finished writing the game story on deadline ... or getting lost in Iota, a town so small that the council could have had it carpeted from end to end.

The Lake area was indeed unique, but, as Dorothy said, “There’s no place like home.”

And that was Metairie.

On early Sunday mornings after the Press staff put the newspaper to bed at 12:30 a.m., I drove 200 miles eastbound on I-10 to spend my free time with the people I love.

So, that call from Peter was a literal godsend.

As a reporter for the Clarion Herald, I came to know the pastors and parishioners of the largest diocese in Louisiana and a first-class staff of professionals at the Clarion Herald who were supportive. I certainly knew the territory, having been born and raised in the Crescent City.

At that time, the newspaper had an excellent youth section, but sports coverage was non-existent except for a column written by the legendary Buddy Diliberto.

But my executive editor, like his father, Peter Finney Sr., was a most proficient sportswriter himself, and he let me talk him into expanding the newspaper’s high school coverage to include a sports page to increase interest among the local Catholic high school students and their families.

Within a few months, my travels to sporting events that not so long ago took me from Pickering to Anacoco to Hackberry to Oberlin now took me to the more familiar LaPlace, Covington, Slidell and Meraux.

The Archdiocese of New Orleans is blessed with  dozens of Catholic schools whose athletic programs, and the men and women who run them, are among the most respected  by their peers in the state.

And recognizing the outstanding athletes has become a mainstay of our sports coverage.

The seasonal Elite teams in several prep sports has become a popular part of this coverage.

So, to celebrate my 25th year, the Clarion Herald will present “Silver Anniversary Elite” teams to encompass those decades through the 2023-24 school year, beginning with the fall sports of football (Sept. 16) and volleyball (Sept. 30) and chosen from the best athletes representing local Catholic schools.

It should be interesting if not thought provoking reading.

So let the second guessing begin!