Cameron is one of several parishes that will be represented in Baton Rouge today to appeal the designation of its athletic programs as “Select” by the Louisiana High School Association.

The LHSAA changed the definition of select and nonselect schools in June and put Grand Lake, Hackberry, Johnson Bayou and South Cameron on the select side.

All appeals will be made to the Executive Committee in a closed-door meeting today.

On Thursday, Executive Director Eddie Bonine will announce his recommendation for select and nonselect playoff bracket sizes, according to a story posted on crecentcitysports.com.

The select designation for Cameron Parish schools stems from an emergency ruling its school board made after Hurricane Rita almost wiped the parish off the map in 2005. With most families displaced, the school board instituted an emergency open enrollment that allowed displaced students to attend schools in Cameron while living out of the standard attendance zones as long as they provided their own transportation.

“Cameron Parish, and still is to this day and before we did what we did, was not open enrollment,” Cameron Parish Superintendent Charley Lemons said. “It never was. Prior to Rita, the school board adhered to a strict attendance zone. Then, after Rita, what happened was they didn’t want the superintendent doing a case-by-case basis.

“So they just said we are going to make it open enrollment. The kids that relocated — whether it is Lake Charles or went further north — you are more than welcome to go back down to where you were at but you have to provide your transportation. There was never a policy change. That is just what was done. It was an understood deal.

“In June, I had the board, right after all this mess came out, go on record and say that Cameron Parish is in fact not open enrollment and we have attendance boundaries that we follow.”

Lemons will appeal to the Executive Committee today.

“I would hope that they understood why the Cameron Parish superintendent and board that was in place then did what they did but still make sure that our kids follow the LHSAA rules,” Lemons said. “If you have never experienced anything like a hurricane and have families that are displaced, you really just don’t understand. We didn’t use the open enrollment rule as an advantage to get a kid eligible at any location. I would hope they understand that.”

The parish did request a one-time exception to the transfer rule of sitting out one year after South Cameron ended its football program in the 2018 season. Tarpons seniors were granted immediate eligibility by the LHSAA to play football at Grand Lake in 2019, but underclassmen had to sit out a year.

“Understand something: those kids had to go through the hardship process,” Lemons said. “It wasn’t just they are going to be eligible. We had to get a ruling on that from Mr. Bonine and the LHSAA Executive Committee on whether or not they were going to be eligible. We went through the proper channels.”

Lemons said the select designation could hurt athletics at some of the parish’s schools that are struggling with having enough athletes to field sports teams.

“When you look at Johnson Bayou, we are fighting every day to keep those sports open as much as we can because of numbers and Hackberry and South Cameron,” Lemons said. “It is obvious that we are not gaining a competitive advantage by doing that.

“It would be a severe handicap and unfairness to our student-athletes to lump us in that group due to an emergency measure that was put in place and just never undone.”