Bonine: LSA ‘not a recognized LHSAA sub-group’

The newly formed Louisiana Select Association “is not a recognized LHSAA sub-group,” LHSAA executive director Eddie Bonine said in a statement released Wednesday to Crescent City Sports.

In forming the LSA by near unanimous vote on Monday, select school officials intended for the association to not only operate state championship events in football, basketball, baseball and softball, but to be an organization to operate as a sub-group of the LHSAA, in similar fashion to the Louisiana High School Coaches Association.

“The LSA … is not a recognized sub-group,” Bonine said in his statement, “nor are they an actor of such, nor the equivalent of the Louisiana High School Coaches Association, Louisiana High School Athletic Directors Association or the Louisiana High School Officials Association. All of these entities are approved, recognized and protected in the LHSAA Constitution as those representing the entire organization.”

Bonine has additional concerns with the timing of the select school action and expressed such concern Tuesday to LSA chief executive officer and Catholic High athletic director J.P. Kelly.

“As I stated (Tuesday) in a phone conversation (with Kelly),” Bonine said, “It is unfortunate it has taken the select school membership since January to organize, and equally as unfortunate the launch of the LSA has happened while an active survey is in the hands of the membership.”

At the association’s January meeting, schools voted to allow select schools to host separate championships in football, boys and girls basketball, baseball and softball.

As Bonine and his staff continue to pursue options to “return the association to a resemblance itself” prior to the initial vote to split the football championships in January 2013, LHSAA members have until Aug. 9 to respond to the survey on a variety of select/non-select questions. One of the survey options, Bonine noted, is “two distinct and separate associations.”

“The LSA structure presented,” Bonine said, “promotes perceptional optics not conducive to LHSAA unification.”