Louisiana High School Athletic Association

The Louisiana High School Athletic Association, more commonly known as the LHSAA, is the agency which regulates and promotes the interscholastic athletic competitions of all high schools in the state of Louisiana.

Organization.

LHSAA was founded in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on October 1920. It is governed by a commissioner and an executive committee, with representatives from each of the association's class divisions. LHSAA member schools include public, private, and parochial schools throughout the state. LHSAA is affiliated with the National Federation of State High School Associations.

As of 1996, LHSAA included 410 member schools and an annual certification of approximately 70,000 student athletes each year. LHSAA. [http://lhsaa.org/meetthelhsaa/History.htm History.] ]

LHSAA is divided into seven state-wide "classes", also known as "divisions", based on each school's student enrollment for grades nine through twelve: 5A, 4A, 3A, 2A, 1A, B, and C. Classes B and C are made up of schools with smaller enrollments that do not play football; the smallest football playing schools are all members of Class 1A. Classes 2A through 5A may include some schools that do not play football, including schools that have all-girl enrollments. Schools with single-gender enrollments have their enrollment numbers doubled for classification purposes. LHSAA. [http://lhsaa.org/Classification.htm Classification.] ]

LHSAA has twenty-three competitive sports programs, twelve for boys and eleven for girls. The LHSAA sports programs are Baseball, Softball, Basketball, Swimming, Bowling, Tennis, Cross Country, Indoor Track and Field, Outdoor Track and Field, Football, Golf, Volleyball, Gymnastics, Wrestling, and Soccer.

History.

Louisiana became the first state in the nation to include a wheelchair division in its state track and field competition for disabled student athletes in 1990. LHSAA. [http://lhsaa.org/meetthelhsaa/History.htm History.] ]

Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita hit Southern Louisiana at the beginning of the 2005 high school football season. The evacuation of New Orleans and other communities forced dozens of high schools to close for months, and several campuses were damaged or destroyed by flooding and wind damage. The football season was not canceled, but several games were postponed or canceled. Some schools in the disaster area were forced to withdraw from competition. Most public schools in Orleans Parish, St. Bernard Parish, and Plaquemines Parish were so badly damaged that they were forced to cancel their entire school year.

Other disaster-area schools combined to form joint teams in fall of 2005 and spring of 2006. One the more noteworthy joint teams came from the Archbishop Rummel Transitional School. Rummel is a traditionally all-boys Catholic school in Metairie, Louisiana. But, in October, the campus welcomed transfer students from other disaster area schools, including girls. As such, Rummel became a co-educational school for the remainder of the school year, and the previously all-boys school fielded a girls athletics program known as the "Lady Raiders". Public schools around the state accused the Archdiocese of New Orleans of assembling the Lady Raiders as an elite girls team, drafting top athletes from storm-damaged girls schools around the Greater New Orleans area. "Clarion Herald". [http://www.catholic.org/clarionherald/issue/20051029/8.pdf Competitive Spirit Triumphs during a Season in Shambles.] Oct. 29, 2005. ]

By the 2006 school year, most of the affected LHSAA schools were able to compete under their own school teams.

Sources.

References.

* [http://lhsaa.org/index.html Louisiana High School Athletic Association Official Website.]

* [http://lhsaa.org/Schools.htm LHSAA Member Schools.]