By RYAN ARENA

Sports Editor

Play up? Shot down.

That’s the official word in the aftermath of the annual LHSAA convention this past weekend.

70 proposals were discussed during Friday’s meeting among Louisiana high school principals, with one garnering much attention being the proposed restructuring of high school football into five divisions. Those would based on enrollment, with schools having the option to “play up”, or move into any higher classification, regardless of that enrollment. The proposal was rejected by a vote of 144-112.

Another proposal was to give all schools the option of playing up from their classification in all sports. That was rejected 146-121.

St. Charles athletic director and football coach Frank Monica said St. Charles was in support of either measure.

“Naturally, I’m somewhat surprised that some of the things we talked about at length weren’t passed. I liked the idea of playing up,” said Monica. “There was a lot of time and effort spent on it, but things flip-flopped back and forth. I’m not sure if everything was explained thoroughly enough.”

East St. John athletic director and football coach Larry Dauterive was disappointed that there will be no quick resolution to determine football’s redistricting and reclassification status for next season, after the dismissal of the division proposal.

“The big issue is that we’re not any closer to making a schedule than we were in November,” said Dauterive. “We’re going to be 5A no matter what, so teams wanting to play up or not, it doesn’t really affect us. But the proposal that was shot down was going to have six teams — an even amount — in each district, so everyone knows they have to schedule five open dates.

“Now, nobody knows how many teams they’re going to have in our district. We don’t know who we’ll be in a district with. Right now, no schedule is really worth the paper it’s printed on.”

Meetings to determine reclassification and redistricting will begin on Feb. 25.

A proposal to add a best two-out-of-three game series to the second and third round of the baseball playoffs was also voted down.

Some notable proposals passed. Postseason seeding procedure based on power rankings has been altered in basketball, baseball, football and softball. Power rankings will also be implemented for the first time in soccer to determine playoff seeding, beginning this week.