Prep football powerhouses elect to play up

CROWLEY – When the Louisiana High School Athletic Association decided to split its football playoffs into two divisions last year — Select and Non-Select — the Notre Dame Pios found themselves thrown into Division II of the select division with traditional football powers John Curtis, Evangel, St. Thomas More and Teurlings.
Making things worse was the fact that other perennial powers like  University High, Parkview Baptist, Vandebilt Catholic and St. Charles were added to the mix, making it one of the toughest if not THE toughest division in the state.
Fast forward to this year, and things have changed dramatically.
As of Monday, Division II in the Select Division has become less crowded.
John Curtis, winner of 26 state titles, was the first to announce that it has opted to play up in 2014 to Division I.
Later in the day, Evangel, St. Thomas More and Teurlings followed suit.
While that may have surprised some, it didn’t shock Notre Dame head coach Lewis Cook, whose Pios are most directly affected by the changes.
“We discussed that (playing up) in a meeting in the spring amongst nine other private school representatives and Kenny Henderson,” said Cook on Wednesday morning. “Division I had 10 teams and two of them (Byrd and Scotlandville) were going to be public schools this year so it would have dropped them to eight teams in Division I.
“We made the suggestion to help that division a little bit and allow teams to play up if they choose to, not knowing how many would or if anybody would. They passed it at their meetings this summer and those teams elected to play up so it gives both of us 12 teams.”
Cook said the change is a good thing for all involved.
“It helps them (Division I) a little bit and although it takes a game away from some of the teams in our division that first week, it does balance it off a little bit and I think everyone is alright with it,” he said.
All four teams moving to Division I advanced to at least the quarterfinals in 2014, with John Curtis knocking off Evangel in the semifinals en route to winning their 26th state title with a 32-0 victory over University in the finals.
“Anytime you have Curtis in there with you, you know that’s going to be tough duty if they fall on your side of the bracket,” said Cook. “But for me, the only team that I felt didn’t belong in our division was St. Thomas More because of their size: they have over 1,000 students and the next 4A school that was put with us was low the 700s.
“They (STM) are 400 students over the next highest team in our division and they are 600 ahead of us, University and St. Charles. If they would have been the only ones to declare up, I would have been fine because they are closer to a 5A school than anyone else.”
The decision by John Curtis was something else.
“Now I’m not going to sit here and say that I’m disappointed because Curtis is out of our division,” Cook admitted. “If it falls that way to where you have to play them, you embrace that challenge. But with them going up, it does create a more balanced league for everybody else because they are pretty far ahead of the rest of us.”
Even with the departures, Division II is still a league that will have a wealth of talented teams.
Division II will now consist of 12 teams, down from 16 last season, that represent a combination of Class 3A and 4A schools.
Notre Dame, University, Parkview, St. Michael, St. Louis, Vandebilt, E.D. White and Loyola Prep are joined by Baton Rouge/New Orleans area teams St. Charles, De La Salle, Thomas Jefferson and Lusher.
Lusher opted not to compete in the Division II playoffs last season.
“You still have teams in there that have been deep into the playoffs in the past,” said Cook. “It’s still going to be a challenging division, no doubt. And with only 12 teams, after the first week, it’s going to be eight good teams in there.”
The top four seeds in Division II will have a bye in the opening round while the eight remaining teams will begin postseason play on Nov. 14. The quarterfinals are slated for Nov. 21 while the semifinals will be played on Nov. 28.
This year, the state championships for all four divisions will be played on Dec. 5 in the Mercedes Benz Superdome, a week before the non-select schools square off for their state title matchups.
“This year, there is no break between the semifinals and the finals like there was last year,” said Cook. “While the public schools are in the semifinals, the privates are going to be in the Dome.”
That fact and the fact that whoever makes it to the title game will possibly miss out on two extra games, is something that Cook doesn’t relish.
Financially, those teams will take a hit.
“In the seven times that we got to the dome, we played five games each year so now if you get there and you get the bye, you’ve only played three games for the playoffs,” said Cook. “The revenue you lose and the fact that there’s another game that these kids don’t get to play, you’d rather not have it that way.
“And playing the state championships on separate weekends, that’s not good. The alternatives, though, were to drop a division for the private schools so you would have combined everyone into three divisions and you would have played four games each day in the dome.”
The 2013-14 playoffs started on Thursday and wrapped up Saturday evening.
Now, the select schools will play all four state championships on Friday, Dec. 5 with Division IV playing at 10 a.m. Division III is slated for a 1:30 p.m. kickoff while the Division II title game will begin at 5 p.m. Division I will follow in the nightcap at 8 p.m.
The public or non-select school championships begin on Friday, Dec. 12 with Class A playing at 4:30 p.m. Class 2A will take the field at 8 p.m.
Saturday’s games begin at noon with the Class 3A title game. Class 4A will take the field at 3:30 p.m. and Class 5A rounds out the evening at 7.