re: LHSAA--Anybody heard any rumors about the LHSAA Executive Director's job?

here are the problems in a nutshell:
Too many parents feel like when their kid is on school time, the school/coach is responsible for their kid. So the thought is when kids are not with coaches they fall through the cracks because parents arent paying attention to them anyway, the kids have too much idle time and they get into trouble. These entitlement attitudes in society have created a responsibility shift from parents to coaches during the season as well as in the offseason. This allows undue influence over kids and over emphasizes athletics and winning over appropriate academic and social standards.

The school boards realized all of this was happening and then principals pushed the LHSAA to relax off season training rules for student athletes and coaches. The theory is, if kids are kept busy with organized team sports, they wont get into trouble.

When I graduated years ago, HS coaches could not have organized practice during the offseason and we didnt really see our coaches until the official start day of a sport. The first loop hole was organized offseason weight and conditioning training. Then the senior "volunteer" workouts came about without the coaches. Then the team camps and summer leagues blew up with the HS coaches. Next thing you know, aggressive HS coaches are with kids year round. If your HS coach is an old school type that doesnt believe in getting involved with kids in the offseason or he/she is a burnout that isnt motivated to be involved with kids in the offseason then the HS program suffers, the best players are feasted on by other aggressive coaches and the program falls apart. Programs that fall apart have coaches that get fired and are replaced by coaches that are involved with their kids in the offseason.

In the background of this, AAU basketball, Select baseball and 7 on 7 football has exploded because HS coaches are either helping organize teams and putting trusted private people/parents in charge or they are coaching the kids themselves. There is a lot of money to be made with individual instruction and team tournaments. The shoe and equipment companies started throwing stupid money into the mix and things got really bad. The effect is there is direct athletic influence on kids from all sorts of different angles 12 mos out of the year with often mixed results.

So the 12 months influence is embraced by certain HS coaches and utilized to their advantage. They have direct contact with kids face to face or through individual instruction coaches/parents/AAU-select coaches etc. The School Boards are powerless to stop the outside influence and manipulation of the system because most of it happens off of school grounds. They dont really want it to stop because the kids are kept busy and off the streets which theoretically keeps them out of trouble.

Now the LHSAA can get involved but they have their own problems. To start an investigation, a principal must file a formal complaint. Few principals are going to do that because they dont want scrutiny themselves and their own program and they dont want to burn bridges with other schools and principals. So the only investigations that are started are usually blatant violations that are very public.

The LHSAA investigation office is woefully understaffed and this hinders their ability to follow up on complaints. Couple that with a deep distrust of the investigation office because the rules of the LHSAA are very specific but the interpretation of the rules and the enforcement of the rules by the Commissioner/Exec Committee has been very uneven to say the least.

So coaches have basically unfettered access to kids year round if they want it. They can use parents or select type coaches to their advantage as well to manipulate kids. The recruiting/eligibility rules are not readily enforced so there is little risk to cheating. This creates an environment that allows cheating or at the very least creates a way to build an athletic powerhouse.

So how do you fix it? You really dont fix it all but you can fix some of it.

Eliminate the current rules regarding transfers and put in more simplified rules.

If you transfer from one school to another within a certain radius, you are ineligible for varsity sports for 365 days.

Create a simplified appeals process for the transfer rule.

Put in much more concrete rules regarding coach contact time like the NCAA has that prevents coaches from practicing during the school day and practicing during the off season

Dedicate more financial resources to the Investigation Office that allows a more open process for filing and investigating complaints.

Create a system that allows a school to play up in each sport as high as they want to.

Implement a better enrollment multiplier system for non-traditional schools that creates a more realistic bi-annual realignment system.

Eliminate districts all together. Schools can play whomever they want to play and the playoff brackets in all sports are decided by power points.


If there is a split, the most logical split is North/South and not public/private. That is where the real problems are. In the Northern part of the state there are more Community schools with firm school zones and very little private school option in place. In the South we have a plethora of magnets, academies, charters, lab schools, privates and public schools under the same set of rules. So the LHSAA is trying to manage a system for all of the various types of schools and it doesnt really work. The proposed solution is to minimize the power of the private schools by creating a separate state championship for them. This will have massive unintended consequences because the powers that be in the South are connected to private schools.