Louisiana High School Athletic Association

Louisiana High School Athletic Association
Abbreviation LHSAA
Motto "High School Athletics — The Master Teacher of Values"
Formation 1920
Type Volunteer
Legal status Association
Purpose Athletic/Educational
Headquarters 12720 Old Hammond Highway
Baton Rouge, LA 70816
Region served
Louisiana
Membership
410+ schools
Official language
English
Executive Director
 Eddie Bonine
Affiliations National Federation of State High School Associations
Staff
20
Website LHSAA.org
Remarks (225) 296-5882

The Louisiana High School Athletic Association (LHSAA) is the agency that 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. The LHSAA's main office was in Hammond from 1953 until 1972, when it moved to Baton Rouge.

The LHSAA is governed by an Executive Director 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. [1]

LHSAA is divided into seven statewide 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. [2]

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. Starting in 2016, select enrollment schools and non-select enrollment schools will participate in different playoffs in Football, Baseball, Softball, and Basketball.

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. [3]

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

Awards

The Southern Quality Ford Cup is the Louisiana High School Athletic Association's (LHSAA) All Sports Award that recognizes the leading overall athletic program in each of the LHSAA's seven classes. The competition is based on a school's performance in the 23 sports governed by the LHSAA. Any team that finishes in one of the top four places in the state earns points towards a school's quest for the cup. At the end of the academic year, the school that has accumulated the most points in its class is presented with the award.

Commissioners/Executive Directors

See also

References

  1. ↑ LHSAA. History.
  2. ↑ LHSAA. Classification.
  3. ↑ http://lhsaa.org/about/history/
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