Not sure if you all heard yet but the vote today was to do a split with basketball, baseball and softball. I'm glad. Not fair for private schools to be able to get kids from out-of-district while public schools can't.
You've got perhaps 4 private schools causing all of the problems: Curtis, Evangel, Calvary Baptist and Parkview. Evangel's impact has pretty much been negated by Calvary. Two more schools are learning to play the game, Madison Prep and Lafayette Christian. Yet every private school is being painted with the same brush. Several better proposals than the select/non select split were suggested; all were taken off the table. The top division of select consists of 10 schools, 7 of whom are in the same district. In what universe does this makes sense? The real inequity when it comes to champions is not between public and private schools, its between rural and metro. The principle didn't want to hear this. Bottom line....they're pussies. Can't beat a couple of private schools, so they create their own watered-down championships to win. The Catholic League principles have supposedly already begun talking about splitting away completely. Let's see how much the public schools like it when they can't schedule games with private schools and their amply-financed fan bases at all.
It's not just four protestant private schools. Forty catholic high schools have recruited and poached star players for decades. All the private schools have to do is create districts and then not take kids from outside the district. Transfers from public schools must sit out a year. But private schools don't want to give up their recruiting advantages. So now they are in a separate league. If they don't like it they can fix it.
Speaking of, they've been making the news lately recruiting kids all over the state to go play boys basketball among other sports and are currently nationally ranked....good for them, I guess. I have friends with kids at other schools they play and they constantly complain about how low class/obnoxious their fans are. I went to a game with my friend and good lord I couldn't believe how their fans/parents were, acting like complete assholes yelling at opposing players, cursing at them it was horrible.....and they do all this under the shroud of being a Christian School, pretty comical. But the best part of it is their "Pastor", walks around in his warm up's like he's some big former athlete and he looks like 400lbs of crap, guy is such a douche it almost looks staged. These parents trying to live their non-athletic career's or make up for their own short comings through their kids is pretty awful.
No, not good for them; they are trying to become to basketball what John Curtis is to football, and they are biggest problem out there. They got the big Alexander kid to transfer from Breaux Bridge, and then went to arbitration to get him eligible immediately. The inside info I got is that they argued his transfer was a safety issue, because he and his girlfriend were allegedly roughed up at the homecoming dance last year. The arbitrator (I'm told) ignored the fact that his safety concerns didn't prevent him from going to every BBHS football game this fall. He also didn't find it significant that he bypassed several closer schools he could have transferred to, and landed at the one where his two best AAU running mates go to school. Yes, they are playing fast and loose with the rules. And while @sunnyjim would have us believe that this problem is rampant, its only a few that truly make a mockery of the rules. Oh, and I've heard the stories about LCA's fans as well. I got to see them play Friday and they were fairly well behaved, but both Ledoux twins sat out (I'm told they both had some sort of "facial procedure") and were not nearly as dominant as they've been all year.
If you look at softball it's very top-heavy with private schools winning state championships and sometimes two teams in the finals in all classifications. 2015 was not as bad but that year was an exception. When you factor in all the teams that private schools eliminate- even a private school team that loses out, say, in the semis, it could change the landscape a lot.
I thought getting rid of the split and going with forcing the private schools to "play up" in the divisions was a good choice. How silly is it to have an 0-10 team in the play-offs? I don't think it is over. The same issues will come up next season. At least they approved my raise.
The way Louisiana has re-structured recently is ridiculous. Also ridiculous are the private schools and their recruiting. Somehow, Louisiana thought they could take Texas' model of private and public schools being in separate divisions and make that work. There just aren't enough schools for it to make sense.
