wholesale ed hardy

Grade requirements for student athletes are expected to tighten in Louisiana in the 2011-12 academic year.

Local coaches don't expect much change in the Tri-parishes.

House Bill 31, authored by Rep. Rickey Hardy, D-Lafayette, has been signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal and will require student athletes to maintain a "C-average" to compete in school-sanctioned athletics.

But local coaches are quick to point out that Lafourche, Terrebonne and St. Mary parishes have followed the standards laid out in the bill for years, meaning the law won't have much of an impact on our local teams.

"We don't anticipate things being much different at all," Thibodaux High School Athletics Director and boys' basketball coach Tony Clark said. "We expect it to be that way for everyone in the area, as well."

When Hardy's bill was first signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal, some coaches and news outlets reported that with it, the minimum GPA for athletic eligibility would shift from a 1.5 to a 2.0.

But local education officials stress that will not be the case in Lafourche, Terrebonne and St. Mary.

In Hardy's bill, it reads that in order to maintain eligibility, a student athlete must have "attained not less than a 'C-average', as determined by the governing authority of the school in which the student is enrolled."

That means the decision as to what a "C-average" truly is rests in the hands of each individual school district.

In all three Tri-parishes, a "C-average" is defined as a 1.5 GPA. That standard is expected to stay the same in the next school year, which will mean the legislation will not have any impact on our area's players.

"There is some ambiguity about what is a C-average," Terrebonne Parish School Superintendent Philip Martin said. "But it is of my understanding that they have left it up to the individual school districts to make that determination and obviously, we're sticking with our grading policy that's been in place for 35 or 40 years, much before this C-average and this 2.0 situation came into athletics."

Even with the bill's fizzle locally, coaches universally stress the importance of academics in the foundations of their programs, touting that even if a 2.0 standard would be put into place, the vast majority of athletes would remain eligible.

"I went through the report cards at the end of the school year and if it's a 1.5, I wouldn't lose anyone," Terrebonne High School football coach Gary Hill said, "But even if it'd be the 2.0, then I think I'd lose only about two.

"That's a good sign that, for the most part, everyone is doing the work that they need to do anyway because you have to remember, with a football team, I have a large group of kids."

Clark agreed and added he supports any measures to keep children focused on making better grades.

"It's all about making the better student athlete," Clark said. "That's what we're here for, to make the better student athlete."

But even with grades in mind, coaches do admit it's a give-and-take situation when dealing with academic requirements for athletics, because reality is some students truly do need sports to stay out of harm's way.

The worst case scenario, according to local coaches, would be a situation where a kid isn't able to make the grades, then drops out of the educational system because he/she no longer has a desire to attend classes.

E.D. White baseball coach Shane Trosclair said he saw that situation play out first hand when he was a coach in the public school system.

"This doesn't really happen at E.D. White because our kids come from a little bit of a different background, but out there, you'd always deal with the kid who might struggle and make just that 1.6 to stay eligible, but the kid truly gave it everything he's got," Trosclair said. "There are kids out there that you can definitively say that if they don't have athletics, they may give up, fall out on the streets and get in trouble.

"I know for sure I coached a lot of kids in the past at St. James and at Lutcher that we saved because of athletics."

To prevent similar situations locally, coaches tout they stress academics in their day-to-day operations. Hill said he has a system in place that rewards players for good behavior in the classroom and suspends players who try and be a class clown.