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LHSAA meets with Cenla coaches, principals prior to annual convention
LaMar Gafford
The Town Talk
PINEVILLE — With a week to go before its annual convention, the LHSAA is making the rounds to all corners of the state.
The organization made a stop to Central Louisiana Wednesday as executive director Eddie Bonine and his staff stopped by Pineville High School to discuss some of the hot-button topics that will be brought up at next week's meeting in Baton Rouge.
"We travel to six cities in three days prior to the annual convention and go through all of the proposals that are prepared for our constitutional and/or bylaw changes," Bonine said. "Everything to this point has gone by smoothly. There's been some good dialogue and good questions."
Eligibility with athletes has always been an issue as Bonine stated that there have been more than 1,400 eligibility rulings since he became the executive director in December 2014 and more than 550 this school year.
"We want to ensure that when we do make a rendering on the decision, that we have all the information that is necessary to do so and the rules are applied correctly," Bonine said. "I want all that information from the get-go. Get it to me now, so that when we make that decision, it's final and binding and your next step would be the hardship committee or, if applicable, an appeal to the executive committee."
Another issue that will be voted on will be having separate state tournaments for the non-select and select schools in football, softball and baseball — mirroring what was passed at the 2018 LHSAA Convention for basketball.
Although it would eliminate the extra competition days and costs such as making the LHSAA softball tournament in Sulphur a three-day event and the LHSAA Prep Classic a two-day showcase at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome again, it would also leave the select schools having to find a venue to host their state tournaments and championship games.
"Before we go any further and stretch this fabric of the organization any further, we need to sit down and discuss the present split that we have with the sports that we have and adjust formats if need be," Bonine said. "We're talking about playing basketball games at 8 a.m. When do we ask anybody to play games that early, especially for something as important as a state championship?
"We just need to sit down and have a good meeting to discuss what we're going to do with the present format we have," he added.
Among the other proposals was one brought up by Anacoco principal Kevin Dowdle, which would combine Classes B and C, shrinking the number of classifications from seven to six while generating stronger districts and eliminating playoffs with numerous first-round byes, according to the explanation on the agenda.
Tioga principal Alan Lacombe had two proposals: one to reduce the use of artificial noisemakers and the other requesting to have LHSAA principals to vote on any changes to the LHSPLA Constitution and Rules of Performance.
A couple of Cenla principals — LaSalle's Kara Maslery and Many's Norman Booker — had proposals for softball. Maslery's is to require pitchers to have both feet on the rubber before starting the pitching motion to help pitchers transition to play outside of high school. Booker, who is also Many's softball coach, is requesting games not reached by mutual agreement to be pushed back to a 4:30 p.m. start if the home team has lights.
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