BIG VOTE AHEAD

Louisiana prep basketball and soccer games scheduled for Friday night may have to be canceled, pending a Louisiana High School Athletic Association vote on official pay that will take place early Friday morning – a vote that will have heavy implications on the state’s athletic future.

At a LHS AA regional meeting on Thursday in Baton Rouge, LHSAA Assistant Executive Director Keith Alexander said that he believes officials will strike and cause game cancellations if a measure locking in official pay raises doesn’t pass on Friday morning at the LHSAA’s annual convention.

During the two-hour meeting designed to explain agenda items to principals, athletic directors and coaches in attendance, Alexander said he hasn’t specifically been told by any Louisiana-based official that they wouldn’t report to duty on Friday, but his gut tells him that that’d be the case.

The pay raise measure for referees is expected to pass. But if something strange happens on Friday morning, the risk is there that games scheduled for later in that night will not be played because of a shortage of on-hand officials.

At the area meetings, the motion for the raise was met with some contention from principals worried about giving pay raises to anyone during a tough economic climate.

“I feel like I have a pretty good pulse on the situation, and my instincts tell me that they won’t be calling games if this does not pass,” Alexander said. “No official has told me that. I’m not speaking for anyone. But I just feel like we will not be playing games on Friday night if this doesn’t go through.”

Two local officials agreed and said their whistles will not be worn on Friday night if the pay raise isn’t approved.

Both referees are veteran members of the Houma-Thibodaux Officials Association, and each asked to remain anonymous because their superiors have asked that all local officials stay out of the press until the final vote is tallied.

But each said that they believe the vast majority of referees will not call games if the pay grade isn’t approved.

A third official was asked to comment, but opted not to, also citing the higher-up’s desire to keep officials out of the headlines with a vote pending.

“I won’t be out there,” said one local official, who works football, basketball, baseball and softball locally. “It’s about more than mon-

ey. It’s about fairness and respect.”

“I fully expect the vote to pass. I want that to be clear,” the other official added. “But if it doesn’t, I think it’s going to get really, really bad really fast, and a lot of games will be in some trouble.”

The fight for increased official pay has been ongoing for quite some time in Louisiana.

The longstanding conflict came to a head last summer when referees claimed a strike was imminent if they weren’t given better pay and a louder voice on rules committees and other committees within the LHSAA.

The fight got so bad that legendary John Curtis football coach J.T. Curtis told reporters that he predicted the 2015 football season would be delayed, if not outright canceled – a statement that echoed throughout the state and served as a warning shot of how serious the issues had become.

Most local coaches in the Houma-Thibodaux area have gone on the record throughout the battle, stating that officiating is a tough job and the locals deserve the jolt in pay.

“I wouldn’t want their job,” South Lafourche football coach Dennis Skains said. “I say give it to them. To me, that’s not even really much of a question.”

After hours of meetings, a deal finally got done in the 59th minute, which saved the 2015 season. But because it took place during the summer and away from the annual convention, the raise could never be officially put into the books and signed as law.

Since the handshake deal, schools have paid the officials more – a total that’s anywhere between $5-20 more per game depending on the individual’s level of qualification.

Since that’s been put in place, some have voiced concern about the decision, which costs each school in the state thousands of dollars more per year.

Alexander said he thinks the alternative to this plan would be one where officials are private contractors free to fish out games on their own. He said that scenario would be a worst-case scenario for the state.

“Let’s please just get this done,” Alexander said. “I’ve been other places like Arkansas, and I’ve seen how it’s done. Can you imagine being the smaller, low-budget school who can’t compete to pay the better officials? Guess what happens? You get stuck with the leftovers – the ones who aren’t as good, because the better officials are gone to the schools with high-dollar. We don’t want to be like that. We think we have a plan on paper that will be fair for all.”

PLAYOFF CHAOS TO UNFOLD ONE OF FOUR WAYS

The ongoing tug of war about official pay isn’t even the most debated topic going on at area meetings.

That would be the football playoffs, and more specifically, how they’ll be shaped in the future after the LHSAA bombshell last week that the public/private split is null and void effective immediately because it was put in place through means that didn’t fall in line with the LHSAA’s constitution.

Louisiana principals will vote Friday morning on four different measures – each completely different in terms of how they’d impact our state’s future.

The first measure is the one Bonine is endorsing – a measure to split our state’s football schools in two divisions – metro and rural. From that split, metro schools would only face other metro schools in the course of postseason play.

To be defined as a metro school, the LHSAA conducted research and identified population density and other statistics, and determined that all schools within a nine-mile radius of the densely populated areas shall be metro and all others would be rural.

In that plan, both Division I (metro) and Division II (rural) would have three-separate sub-classes, which would filter schools based on enrollment. This means that Louisiana’s football state champions would drop from its current position of nine to six.

In the rural/metro alignment, Vandebilt, E.D. White, South Terrebonne, Covenant Christian, Houma Christian, Terrebonne, Central Lafourche, Thibodaux, Ellender and H.L. Bourgeois would be metro, while South Lafourche would be rural.

Houma Christian, E.D. White, South Terrebonne, Terrebonne, Central Lafourche, Thibodaux and H.L. Bourgeois are all challenging their position as metro schools and are seeking to become rural, pending a hearing that’s expected before Friday morning’s vote.

“There are bugs to work out,” Bonine said. “There is no perfect system. But this is the one that you can say that I’m throwing my support to.”

Bonine said the metro/rural split would be just in football for 2016 as a trial run to “work the kinks out.”

If deemed successful, it would then have the possibility to expand to other sports.

“Football is the case study,” Bonine said. “Figure that the plan is to take it and then go from there and see how it works.”

Other plans expected to get play at the convention involve the public/private split of the past few years.

One plan, written by Mandeville High School, would eliminate the public/private split entirely and return Louisiana to its five-class alignment of the past – the same structure used in the state before the split was adopted. In this plan, public and private schools would compete against one another again just as they did throughout history.

Another is on the completely opposite extreme, and seeks to take the public/private split and expand it beyond football and into all sports. If this passes, public and private schools will be banned from playing one another in all postseason competition in all varsity sports.

Bonine confirmed that the bill was written in accordance with the LHSAA constitution, which would make it legal, if passed – unlike the football-only public/private split, which passed with 63 percent of the principal’s vote last year, but is now no longer an option because of a technicality in its wording.

The last postseason agenda item would also disband the public/private split, but would create a ‘Superclass’, titled Class 6A, which would feature the schools with the 32 largest enrollments in Louisiana.

Bonine and Louisiana High School Coaches Association Director Terence Williams answered a slew of questions about each proposal on Thursday, seeking to clear up any confusion in the way the agenda items were worded.

The area meeting in Baton Rouge was one of six that Bonine and his staff had throughout the state last week.

“We want you all to have all of the information,” Williams said. “Nothing will be hidden. We want every principal to vote with a clear conscience and for the plan that is best for their philosophy and thought process.”

And what if none of the proposals pass?

Bonine said he’d then need to meet with his executive committee and then seek the advice of the LHSAA’s attorney.

A poll of principals at the Thursday meeting showed that the nixing of every proposal was a real possibility. Of 15 principals asked by The Times, 11 said they didn’t yet know how they would vote. Two of the four who said they did know their vote said that they were against all four playoff proposals.

OTHER NOTEWORTHY ITEMS SET FOR VOTE

Less controversial topics up for a vote on Friday morning involve football, basketball and even smaller sports.

In football, an item set for vote would give football teams an extra five days of preseason practices in August if they opt to not have a spring football season in May. This measure would mostly be relevant to smaller schools, which sometimes don’t have the numbers to have spring football, and thus, opt out of participating at all.

In basketball, an item set for vote would give teams the ability to play in as many non-district tournaments as they like, as long as they don’t play any more than three games per day. The current rule says that teams are limited to just three tournaments per season.

In girls’ basketball, an item set for vote would allow non-faculty members to serve as the head coach for the sport, adding it to a list of other sports that share that distinction. Right now, baseball, bowling, cross country, golf, gymnastics, powerlifting, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis, track and wrestling don’t require a faculty member as head coach, but football and both boys’ and girls’ basketball does.

In bowling an item would allow for more regions within the state, which would expand the growing sport’s postseason.

And in swimming, qualifying times for the state meet would be slightly altered, if an item passes.

‘My instincts tell me that they won’t be calling games if this does not pass. No official has told me that. I’m not speaking for anyone. But I just feel like we will not be playing games on Friday night if this doesn’t go through.’

Keith Alexander

LHSAA Assistant Exec. Director

Louisiana High School Athletic Association Executive Director Eddie Bonine smiles during a press conference. The LHSAA’s annual convention will be Friday, and it promises drama.

COURTESY PHOTO

A Louisiana High School Officials Association patched official gets set to toss up the coin during a game this season. Officials pay is one of the hotbed topics facing high schools on Friday at the LHSAA’s Annual Convention in Baton Rouge. The vote will take place Friday morning.

COURTESY