High School Split Playoffs..No More

[Duggie35]

Some of these suggestions just make way too much sense to be considered by the LHSAA and those in charge of education in this State.

[Duggie35]

I saw the following comment on another site that addresses how a particular situation was handled in Texas, regarding a couple of Private schools.

The UIL allowed Houston Jesuit and Dallas Jesuit to join the association due to years of asking and the fact it was too difficult for them to find competition in Tapps for state playoffs. One year the basketball Tapps largest division had only four schools in the entire state in the playoffs. So here are the rules as told to me by Dallas Jesuit parents at a track meet.

1.They must play in the largest division, which was 5A, but they are now in 6A. Today was Realignment Day, so everyone in Texas found out their new district. Jesuit has 2214 students(1100 boys plus 1114 girls at Urseline) which is the smallest 6A program in North Texas. 2199 is the cutoff from 5A. They are located one block from the Dallas Galleria, so they are in a league of DISD schools, but Skyline and Berkner are really good programs in all sports.
2.They must keep their admission standards. This is where I feel the LHSAA has failed miserably. In other words, for the past 77 years Jesuit students must take an admission test to get in during the spring of their 8th grade year. They must have a certain GPA in Middle School, etc. They do have hardship scholarships, but it illegal to give athletic scholarships. Tuition is $16,200 a year, so alumni board wants to keep it an academic institution and help those that are financially in need, but have kids who qualify for the school.

They give out $2 million in academic aid, but no athletic aid. Test scores and GPA as well as middle school recommendations. In other words, they offer 20 varsity sports and 80 extracurricular activities for all students. They are all male and they mix with Ursaline Academy, one of the best All-Girl prep schools in the USA. They have girls from overs-seas and they have dorms. There are NO props coming out of these sports programs.

3.All coaches must be full time employees. No McDonough 35 deals where three coaches don't even work at the school.

4. Attendance zones are set up by the UIL to mirror the closest public school. Athletes out of zone must sit for one year.
The rules have kept Jesuit clean , plus they are 77 years old and are known for academics, so alums are not worried about winning district championships. They have done well in baseball and football, making the playoffs just about every year. They will not get past round two because they will start to meet much tougher competition.

[CajunT]

I like the 10/3 rule.

If you finish in the top or bottom 10% of your district for 3 years straight, you get promoted or demoted. 4 or more years is too much because if a school is in the wrong district, an entire class of students will get the shaft, never getting to compete against schools with similar talent levels.

Conversely, 1 or 2 years is not enough time to get a true picture of a school's program level.

If we focus simply on championships, it will not provide enough fluidity to make a difference except for a select few schools.

So, the question becomes, do we want an entirely new system based on competition levels or do we want to reclassify one or two schools?

Well, then you are micro-managing districts. It's really not that complicated and necessary to create an entire new system. Winning districts is one thing, and state championships are another. Looking at something on a 3 year basis seems awfully heavy handed. So, if a school has a very special group of sophomores and the program wins 3 consecutive districts championships by the time they are seniors, they are moved up a classification? Again, that is entirely unnecessary and too much change from the district level yearly.

Addressing programs that have established themselves as state football powers is the way to go in my opinion, you don't change the makeup of districts and rivalries yearly.

[RaisingCajun08]

Or.....public schools can just improve their education so that there is no advantage to going to a private school.

Ding, ding, ding ... we have a winner!

Public schools in the area where I live are way below standard. If I want my kids to get a good education, I have 2 choices.

1. Private school (current choice)
2. Move

[ManAboutTown]

Ding, ding, ding ... we have a winner!

Public schools in the area where I live are way below standard. If I want my kids to get a good education, I have 2 choices.

1. Private school (current choice)
2. Move

I've had this convo with Cajun T, but for folks in your position, how much do you enjoy paying taxes on schools and services that you don't even use? We're paying tuition because the public schools are sub par, and then we're paying for those sub par schools to continue to operate. It's a joke man.

[CajunNation]

Addressing programs that have established themselves as state football powers is the way to go in my opinion, you don't change the makeup of districts and rivalries yearly.

Not yearly. Every 3 years to give every graduating class a chance to play in the right district.

Rivalries? That idea went out of the window when we went to 5 classes. This perpetuated the need to change district lineups almost every few years now, especially for the smaller classifications.

The 10/3 rule would only effect a handful of schools each season statewide. It would not take very long for parity to exist in most districts.

[CajunNation]

I've had this convo with Cajun T, but for folks in your position, how much do you enjoy paying taxes on schools and services that you don't even use? We're paying tuition because the public schools are sub par, and then we're paying for those sub par schools to continue to operate. It's a joke man.

Union membership should not be forced. More and more states are moving away from this model. I see the same happening in the future with public school taxation.

[mxt3999]

A perfect example is the big DT from north side transferring to notre dame...if you were watching your kid jeopardize his future by hanging out with the wrong people and getting caught up in the wrong environment and you had a chance to totally remove him from that situation, I think every parent would do it. I don't see anything wrong with that.

^This guy gets it

[Cajun90]

I don't think you look at it from year-to-year, but every 5 years. Look, all this conversation is really about two private schools over the past decade, Evangel and John Curtis. My opinion has been you don't need things like the 1.5 rules to alleviate programs from dominating certain classifications.

I'm speaking specifically about football, but if a program wins more then 2 state championships in a 5 year period, then the LHSAA should make them play up to the next classification regardless of the student enrollment. Evangel and John Curtis were forced to play up and neither have won state championships, the last for Curtis was in 2013 and 2010 for Evangel. The creation of Calvary Baptist has cut in to the number of athletes that are enrolling at Evangel now. And simply pushing John Curtis to the Catholic League in 5A Football would have alleviated the concern.

But let's be honest, their are publicly schools that should be looked at as well specifically because they become powers in rural areas. Haynesville has won 3 (2009,2013,2014) in the past 6 years. I have no problem with the LSHAA forcing them to play up a classification regardless of student enrollment.

Creating private and public divisions simply enhances programs like Notre Dame, Parkview Baptist and Southern Lab chances to win state titles. All private schools are not funded equally, nor are public schools as well.

I think the one thing almost everyone on this thread seems to agree on is the idea that schools should be assigned to a Class/Division based on performance and not just enrollment numbers. Public/private breakup isn't the answer.

I do understand your concern. I've had the opportunity to be exposed to it with youth soccer for a number of years now. In soccer it usually only effects a few teams each year within a group. I haven't always agreed with the decisions but I do understand them. It really isn't a difficult process and the point of doing it annually is to account for changes.

Clubs usually have some input. I know people are skeptical of allowing a group of adults to behave better than they currently are behaving but I've seen the system in action and it definitely works better than what we have right now. Sometimes teams aren't relegated/promoted because they asked to stay at a level and it would help balance leagues. In cases like this they get their wish. At other times its the exact opposite.

I've seen situations where teams have been very grateful to be relegated so the kids would have an opportunity to be competitive. I've also seen teams get relegated from the highest level "Comp 1" to "Comp 2" and be very upset. In these cases what you usually find is the team that gets relegated dominates the lower division while the team that gets promoted in their place doesn't perform much better than the team they took the place of.

I've got a child in such a situation right now. Their team dominated a "Comp 2" division but did not get promoted. One other team did get promoted because they beat us 1-0.

So we will once again dominate the Comp 2 group this spring. However if we were to get promoted I would have expected us to be in the bottom third but the kids wanted that promotion and are a little disappointed. It's not all bad. They have more drive now because they know how close they were.

No system is perfect and I like the annual evaluation but I'd take your proposal in a heartbeat over the current situation.

[Duggie35]

Interesting comments and points of view:

http://sportsnola.com/video-private-...s-split-lhsaa/

[Duggie35]

More insight from the New Orleans area.

http://sportsnola.com/time-public-pr...e-hopes-unity/

[Duggie35]

Sorry!!