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
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...
.
Organization
LHSAA was founded in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in October 1920. The LHSAA's main office was in Hammond from 1953 until 1972, when it returned 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
The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) is the body that writes the rules of competition for most high school sports and activities in the United States. NFHS's headquarters are located in White River State Park in Ind ...
.
As of 1996, LHSAA included 410 member schools and an annual certification of approximately 70,000 student athletes each year.
LHSAA. History. /ref>
LHSAA is divided into nine statewide classes and divisions, based on each school's student enrollment for grades nine through twelve: Classes 5A, 4A, 3A, 2A, 1A, and Divisions I, II, III, and IV . Divisions are made up of schools of a private/religious nature; the smallest schools are all either members of Class 1A or Division IV. Classes 2A through 5A and Divisions II through IV 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.
LHSAA. /ref>
LHSAA has twenty-three competitive sports programs, twelve for boys and eleven for girls. The LHSAA sports programs are
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...
,
Softball
Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...
,
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...
,
Swimming
Swimming is the self-propulsion of a person through water, or other liquid, usually for recreation, sport, exercise, or survival. Locomotion is achieved through coordinated movement of the limbs and the body to achieve hydrodynamic thrust that r ...
,
Bowling
Bowling is a target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls a ball toward pins (in pin bowling) or another target (in target bowling). The term ''bowling'' usually refers to pin bowling (most commonly ten-pin bowling), thou ...
,
Tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...
Indoor Track and Field
Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping events ...
,
Outdoor Track and Field
Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping event ...
Golf
Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible.
Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping ...
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Volleyball
Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Sum ...
,
Gymnastics
Gymnastics is a type of sport that includes physical exercises requiring balance, strength, flexibility, agility, coordination, dedication and endurance. The movements involved in gymnastics contribute to the development of the arms, legs, s ...
,
Wrestling
Wrestling is a series of combat sports involving grappling-type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. Wrestling techniques have been incorporated into martial arts, combat ...
, 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
Before 1935, Louisiana had organized athletic programs for white children only. In 1935 William Gray of Southern University established the Louisiana Interscholastic and Literary Association (LIALO) to provide an organization for the African-American students of the state. This organization was absorbed into the LHSAA in 1969 and 1970 when the federal courts forced Louisiana to integrate the public schools. The LHSAA has not recognized the accomplishments or records of LIALO schools and their students pre-integration, and many of those records are lost. In 1990, Louisiana became the first state in the nation to include a wheelchair division in its state track and field competition for disabled student athletes.Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita hit Southern Louisiana at the beginning of the 2005 high school football season. The evacuation of
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
Plaquemines Parish
Plaquemines Parish (; French: ''Paroisse de Plaquemine'', Louisiana French: ''Paroisse des Plaquemines'', es, Parroquia de Caquis) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 23,515 at the 2020 census, the 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.
Louisiana Independent School Association
The Louisiana Independent School Association (1970-1992), more commonly known as LISA, was an athletic association created to offer interscholastic sports at all-white segregation academies in the state of Louisiana. The organization is no long ...
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Midsouth Association of Independent Schools The Midsouth Association of Independent Schools (MAIS) is a consortium of schools in Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana and Arkansas. It is responsible for accreditation of its member private schools as well as governing athletic competition for its ...