Potential changes coming from LHSAA
Leading up to the Louisiana High School Athletic Association’s annual convention, at which it conducts the association’s business primarily in the form of new leadership and rule changes, it conducts area meetings. Basically what this entails is select LHSAA membership…
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Continue ReadingLeading up to the Louisiana High School Athletic Association’s annual convention, at which it conducts the association’s business primarily in the form of new leadership and rule changes, it conducts area meetings. Basically what this entails is select LHSAA membership travelling around to six hubs in the state – Shreveport, Monroe, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, Lafayette and New Orleans – and going over the agenda for the upcoming convention. It sounds tame and boring; it often isn’t, simply because the coaches/athletic directors present take the opportunity to bash the LHSAA leadership to their faces.
Those hijinks aside, this agenda does present some potential changes to basketball, so let me outline those for you. These proposals will be voted upon in the convention at the end of January in Baton Rouge.
- The LHSAA’s Executive Committee wants to increase the minimum price of admission for playoff games from $2 to $5. I can’t think of any schools in my area that this would effect (or, really, why any school would only charge $2 for a playoff game in the first place), but one would assume there is a reason for such a proposal.
- Charles Catholic administrator Andrew Cupit is proposing a change to the composition of the divisions new to basketball this season. Currently, Division I is for the 5A schools deemed select while Division II is 4A and 3A; Cubit wants to make Division I for 5A and 4A teams, making Division II exclusively for 3A teams while leaving Divisions III (2A), IV (1A) and V (Classes B and C) unchanged.
- Here’s one I’m a big fan of, as proposed by Tommy Hodges of Doyle. The proposal is to allow teams that have byes in the playoff to play exhibitions against other teams with playoff byes, provided those exhibitions occur before either team begins its playoff in earnest. By my count, there will be 16 teams in the state with a first-round bye in the playoffs; why not let them prevent rust with some harmless fun? A coach might not view it as harmless fun when his best player gets injured in one, but until then, let the kids run.
- One more: a proposal to ban a current student of a school from being that school’s official scorer or scoreboard operator. Sounds just. The same two administrators behind that proposal, Michelle R. Chiasson of E.D. White and Buffy Fegenbush of Berwick, propose an alteration to the power points formula that does not punish teams for playing against teams that have forfeited games later. I don’t think it’s all that common for high school basketball teams to forfeit games, so the rule sounds a little unnecessary, but on its own principle, it sounds fine.