By Staff
Athletic Management, 18.2, February/March 2006, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/am/am1802/qaleland.htm
When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in August, one of the areas hardest hit was Slidell, La., a city of 25,000 people located 30 miles east of New Orleans across Lake Pontchartrain. For Slidell’s Salmen High School and Athletic Director Mike Leland, life was instantly turned upside down. When Leland first visited the school after the hurricane, he found a building damaged beyond repair, and virtually all his athletic facilities and equipment in ruin.
Despite the loss of its school building, Salmen’s classes were up and running again by early October, at nearby Northshore High School. Each school day for the rest of the semester, Northshore held classes from 6:55 a.m. until 12:37 p.m., then Salmen took over the building from 1:15 p.m. until 6:55 p.m. Everything—from classrooms and offices to the gymnasium and the weightroom—was shared between the two schools. In January, Salmen finally secured a building of its own, taking over a local junior high school whose students were relocated.
From a pre-Katrina enrollment of 1,100, Salmen has seen only about 600 students return since the hurricane, the rest scattered all across the country. But life has gone on for the athletic program, albeit with some major adjustments. In this interview, Leland talks about the importance of athletics in getting his school back on its feet, helping athletes cope with tragedy, and how the hurricane has altered the high school sports landscape in Louisiana.
AM: What was the first job-related thing you did after the hurricane?
Leland: I was in Mobile, Ala., during the storm and then moved on to Destin, Fla., afterward. As soon as I could get back to Slidell, I went to our school building to see what could be salvaged. And what I saw was unbelievable. We had lost almost all our football equipment and all our field maintenance equipment, including our tractor. Our field lights were torn down, as was our scoreboard. After seeing all that, I didn’t know if we would be able to field a football team. Of course, at that point, we really didn’t even know what the status of the school would be.
But you found out pretty soon that your school building wouldn’t be immediately habitable?
Yes, which led to Northshore’s invitation. At the first meeting our district administrators had after the storm, before they even sat down, the principal from Northshore approached our principal and said, ‘Byron, I don’t know what’s going to happen here today, but you are welcome to share Northshore High School with us.’ That’s how it all got started.
Since the school day was split between the two schools, that meant our teams could practice in the morning while their students were in class. Football, for instance, practiced from 9 o’clock until noon.
Northshore’s people were incredibly accommodating with everything. They closed off half of their field house and gave it to us, allowed us to use their laundry facilities, and shared their gym, weightroom, and equipment storage area.
The cooperation between coaches was excellent, too. The two principals and the two athletic directors got together for a meeting before we opened school. We decided that if there were any problems between the coaches, first the coaches themselves would try to work it out, then the athletic directors would get involved, and the next step would be the principals. As it turned out, no conflicts ever made it to the athletic directors. The coaches worked together and solved any problems that came up.
Was it important to get sports up and running again to send a message that Salmen would survive?
Absolutely. Our principal said early on it was very important that we get football going, because that was one thing that would draw kids back to school. There had been a lot of rumors floating around that they were going to bulldoze Salmen High School and it would never come back. We wanted to dispel those rumors and show the community that the school was working toward a full return. We also had to show the superintendent that we might be down, but we were not out. We weren’t going to let our school go under.
People might ask, how in the world can football help a school survive? To tell the truth, if we hadn’t had football, I don’t think a lot of kids would have come back to Salmen High School. More than 200 students showed up on the first day back to school, and while most were not football players, a lot of them came back because they heard that the football team would be playing. They thought, "If football is happening, doggone it, they’re going to rebuild Salmen!"
Were you successful in getting athletes to come back?
In some cases we were. We had one very good boys’ basketball player who had moved to Atlanta, and when he heard that sports were coming back and football was up and running, he decided that he wanted to return to Salmen. The school in Atlanta had found his dad a good job, they had found him a place to live, and they were taking care of him. But he wanted to come back here, and he did.
On the other hand, we lost several very good football players. Two went to Tampa and played on a state runner-up team, and they’ve both received college scholarships. A couple others went up to Ohio and played, one went to Kansas, and another to Texas. They were successful where they went, and you can’t blame them for deciding to stay where they knew there would be electricity, a roof over their head, and clean sheets to sleep on.
But I really have to hand it to the kids who came back and went through all the turmoil because they wanted to be a part of the program and the rebuilding of the school. It took a special group of kids. We’ll have a picture of all our athletes from this year hanging on the wall in the new school, and it will be there forever.
Was there any bitterness toward the athletes who didn’t return?
Their choice did hurt us. Our football team went 0-7 and we had a few kids who probably would have been looked at more closely by colleges if we had a winning program. I really feel sorry for those athletes.
As for the players who left, we wished them success, though we weren’t overly thrilled with the decision they made. I wonder how much pressure came from parents to move to a situation that would be better athletically for the individual instead of coming back here and being loyal to their schoolmates and teammates. But it was a very tough situation, and I respect the choices they made.
How depleted was your football program?
Luckily, we were able to get all of our coaches back, and that helped a lot. But we lost our athletic trainer—he moved to Birmingham—and the thought of not having an athletic trainer for the football team was pretty scary. As it turned out, the husband of one of our teachers was an athletic trainer at Loyola University in New Orleans, and he was out of work because of the storm. He jumped in and provided his services for us, which was great.
We had 23 players show up on the first day, and we ended up with 38 by the end of the season. We had kids playing for us who probably would never have made the varsity team under normal circumstances. And there were a lot of kids playing both sides of the ball.
The most important thing was that everybody pitched in where they could. Our head coach held weekend meetings at his house, and parents would pick up other people’s kids from all over the city to get everyone to practice. It was an example of a tough situation bringing out the best in people.
With so many athletes dealing with personal tragedy, are coaches having to act as counselors?
We had a faculty meeting where the school psychologist told everyone to prioritize talking with kids—that each of us would have the opportunity to be the one who’s there for a kid when they need someone to open up to. After school started, our teachers and coaches spent a lot of time just asking kids how things were going and seeing what they could do to help. But it wasn’t a big adjustment for our coaches, because that’s the kind of close relationship and openness they had with the kids already.
What is your strategy for finding coaches with that kind of commitment to kids?
One big thing I look for when hiring coaches is longevity. I always try to find out how long they expect to stay. I don’t want to hire someone who’s going to be here for two years and then leave, regardless of their skill level. I want coaches who can build great relationships with our students. I also evaluate their knowledge of the sport, their enthusiasm, and their expectations and goals for the program.
But probably the biggest thing I look at is organizational skills. If things like eligibility forms and other paperwork aren’t getting done until the last minute, that hurts the program and creates more stress for me as the athletic director. If the coach is not organized, I know I’m going to be fighting fires all the time.
What do you prioritize when you evaluate your coaches?
I think about their relationships with their players, and with parents. I also think about how they handle criticism: Do they ignore it, do they get defensive, or do they discuss it and try to learn from it? Another important area is their ability to tackle problems. Are they always running to me or to the principal with problems, or do they try to handle things on their own?
In the six years I’ve been here, we’ve never evaluated a coach on winning and losing. Your win-loss record isn’t a factor at Salmen High School. It’s getting along with athletes, parents, people in the community, and the other coaches. Cooperation is extremely important, for instance, when it comes to sharing athletes with other sport coaches. And that’s going to be an even bigger issue now, since our student population has been cut almost to half of what it was.
Before the hurricane, Salmen was one of the state’s elite athletic programs—the football team has won three state championships, and several other teams have produced quality college athletes. Over the years, have you had to deal with coaches from other high schools trying to recruit your students?
Definitely. Here in Slidell, we have only one private high school and it doesn’t really engage in recruiting, but there are a few schools across Lake Pontchartrain that have attracted a lot of athletes from Slidell, and in some cases the athletes were actively recruited. The schools didn’t try to sneak around or anything, they just did it. Should they have been nailed for it? Yes. Did they get caught? No.
We saw some recruiting in the aftermath of the storm as well. This year it was almost legal, because an athlete could go anywhere in the country and play without being penalized. In fact, the quarterback and one of the wide receivers on this year’s Class 4A football championship team came from a school that was shut down by the storm. Someone in town got the parents a job, and the athletes moved and played football for a new team.
Last year, the Louisiana High School Athletic Association proposed some new guidelines, such as boundaries for private schools, aimed at putting public and private schools on a more level playing field. Do you think that could help diminish recruiting?
Yes, I think the new plan would help curb a lot of recruiting. But it didn’t get a chance to work out because of the storm, and now that issue is on the back burner. The big question right now is whether we are going to reclassify or redistrict in some way. A lot of schools in New Orleans probably won’t be back next year, both public and private, and that’s going to mean big changes.
How do you promote sportsmanship in your program?
Sportsmanship starts with the coaches. For us, it starts with a meeting I have with them every year to make clear what’s expected of them. I explain that when your emotions are running high, sometimes you just have to swallow them. We constantly talk about the importance of being a good role model, and the coaches in turn share that message with their athletes.
Salmen is fairly unique in that you test your athletes for steroid use. How did your drug-testing program begin, and how is it run?
Our school board instituted it four years ago, and there was actually very little debate about it. All the athletes and their parents sign an information form saying that they can be tested, and every month we have testers come in—a computer randomly picks out seven or eight kids who are given a urine test. The test we use can’t find everything, but we’re pretty confident that if a kid were using steroids, the test would find them out.
We also don’t allow athletes to use creatine. Although it’s not a steroid, we don’t believe using a supplement is the right way to bulk up and build muscle.
What happens when an athlete tests positive?
The entire process is kept confidential. For the first offense, they’re given an opportunity to go to counseling. For a second offense, they’re dismissed from the team for the rest of the year. In the four years we’ve been doing the testing, we’ve had only four athletes test positive.
What have the past six months taught you about your role as athletic director?
I’ve learned how quickly you can lose everything that’s around you, and that you shouldn’t take anything for granted. I’ve also learned how much athletics can really mean in a time when a lot of other things are in disarray. Our football team took a beating on the scoreboard, but that’s all right. The players hung tough and stayed together, and my hat is off to them for what they did. Our principal was at our first game, and he said that seeing the opening kickoff and knowing that the team was back was one of the biggest thrills he’s ever had.