What the 5A & 4A schools did to Evangel and John Curtis is one of the most cowardly things I have ever seen. For those 2 teams to have to play 1A & 2A schools is rediculous. Most competitors want to test themselves against the best. But not these sissys. They would rather see those over matched small schools get humiliated and probably suffer many injuries. No cajones.
Wasn't it the LHSAA that did it? I live in MS, so I may not be getting the full story, but I agree, it was the wrong decision by whoever did it.
The schools in the classification gets to vote on accepting a school who wants to play up. This is nothing more than payback to the private schools ... public schools have complained for years about their recruiting, now they are getting even.
Evangel and Curtis playing a lower classification school is like LSU and the other large universities playing Arkansas State and Louisiana Monroe. It should not be allowed.
If these schools suspect Evangel and JC of cheating, then the LHSAA has an obligation and duty to investigate and punish those schools per the bylaws of the LHSAA, but what they are doing now is taking the easy way out and are being cowardly little b*tches. Seems like the LHSAA is made up of the characters from the Wizard of Oz, no heart, no brain, no courage.
Curtis and Evangel don't really need to cheat to much, they're just going to get a lot of kids in their region of the state to go there anyway nowadays, as parent will even move to a different state for the athletic son or daughter. The public schools were basically pissed off because they are bound by such tight districts whereas the private schools aren't, and it's hard to blame em. The shame of it all is that some schools who do play by all of the rules and who have great reasons to play up or down got caught in the flood waters when the voting occured.
It will be bad maybe for a year or MAYBE two but if you think people arent going to pull their kids from evangel and jc now that they are playing low profile football, your crazy. Schools will have to boost enrolment or its the end of thier prestigious programs.
This has been a rather complicated matter for a number of years. The LHSAA has struggled to get a handle on it and from the looks of things, hasn't done a very good job of resolving it. Obviously, if these schools hadn't been as successful as they have, nobody would give a rat's. Will be interesting to see how this plays out next year. The games will be predictable, no doubt about it. How the small schools will react to it remains to be seen. All said, it has to be damaging to both the Evangel and John Curtis programs.....and that, justified or not (and I don't know), is why it happened.
Evangel will continue to schedule tough out of district games - they usually have to go out of state to find a top quality team that will play them. And now that they are ridiculously in 1A, they will continue to win state championships. HS football in the Shreveport area was all but dead before Evangel hit its stride. The level of play among the public schools has risen to meet the challenge and while they are still a step behind Evangel they were getting better and HS football was seeing a resurgence. Now that the fans don't have Evangel to hate, I suspect attendance will drop once more. LSHAA managed to punish the private schools, and even more so the 1A and 2A public schools, but no one address public magnet schools. They also can gather athletes from outside a restricted "district". This was just a chickens*** decision by the public school principals who showed no principles. I'm just disgusted by the whole thing. I guess the PAC-10, Big 12, and SEC AD and presidents should vote to send USC, Oklahoma, and LSU to Div III. If you are scared to play the best then why bother suiting up at all. Do you think Hahnsville would have gotten more pleasure out of beating Woodlawn BR for the championship last year or did it mean that much more beating Evangel? LHSAA and HS football in Louisiana, like everything else, is a joke!
