Goodbye to Top 28 – Gerald Hebert, 15th Consecutive Year, Lafayette Host

Goodbye to Top 28 – Gerald Hebert, 15th Consecutive Year, Lafayette Host

Goodbye to Top 28 – Gerald Hebert, 15th Consecutive Year, Lafayette Host

Nicholas Persac • npersac@theadvertiser.com • March 13, 2011

High School basketball teams from across the state have been pounding the floorboards in the Cajundome since Wednesday, competing for a title just as the past 14 years worth of state champion teams have done.

This year’s tournament, the 15th consecutive Louisiana High School Athletic Association boy’s Top 28 Tournament held in Lafayette, will be the last such tournament in the Hub City for at least two years.

"Let’s keep the tournament going around the state rather than locking into one location," said Mary Ann Tice, executive director and CAO of the Shreveport Regional Sports Authority, which offered LHSAA a more finacially appealing bid to host the tournament than Lafayette was able to. Shreveport will host the tournament for the next two seasons.Organizers here feel slighted, saying LHSAA didn’t fully recognize the cumulative product of many small efforts to host a premier high school tournament.

And the thousands of people who came here every year will no longer pump millions of dollars into Lafayette’s economy, leaving a void in local businesses’ income as well as tournament organizers’ schedules.

A more appealing bid

Gerald Hebert, coordinator of athletic development for UL, first had the idea of bringing the tournament to Lafayette as he watched the Top 28 in Baton Rouge at LSU.

He talked with coaches there who said attending the tournament cost teams money. LSU wasn’t providing much assistance make the tournament enjoyable."The more questions I would ask, the more I would say, ‘That doesn’t sound right to me,’" Hebert said. "They never felt like they were treated special, and I asked what they’d think about coming to Lafayette. They pretty much laughed and said there was no way to get it away from Baton Rouge and from LSU."But that’s exactly what Hebert did.Hebert worked with Greg Davis, director of the Cajundome, to develop what Davis called an "aggressive package" of incentives to bring the Top 28 here.

In that package, Davis worked to offer a "zero bid" to LHSAA, meaning the Cajundome wouldn’t charge the group for using the arena.

"It was quite obvious ours was the best proposal," Davis said.

Davis said sponsors covered the operating cost, allowing the arena to break even."Everybody was shocked," Davis said of the tournament making it to Lafayette in 1997.

Even though the Cajundome could financially come up better from using the dates for a concert or other event, Davis said part of the organization’s mission is to "enhance entertainment in the region, and the Top 28 did that."By the 2006 tournament, however, Davis said offering the zero bid incentive wasn’t financially feasible because of mounting costs and a harsher economy scaring away sponsors.

LHSAA accepted the bid then, even with a $50,000 rental fee for the Cajundome, and the agreement remained through the 2011 tournament.LHSAA planned to restructure the tournament for the 2012 and 2013 seasons with fewer games a the final location and having semi-final games at three locations across the state. Because the Cajundome would have been used less, the Cajundome reduced its rental fee to $45,000 when the bid for those seasons came up.

But Tice and her team in Shreveport swooped in, offering their own zero bid for the CenturyTel Center."We are not in the position 15 years later to offer zero bid," Davis said.

Underwriting costs with not only sponsorships but also Shreveport Regional Sports Authority dollars put the CenturyTel team a step ahead of the Cajundome, which Davis said doesn’t have reserve funds to help cover such costs."It’s pretty similar to when Lafayette got the bid 14 years ago from LSU," said Kenny Henderson, LHSAA executive director. "It’s basically the same story for Lafayette with Shreveport coming in."

Economic impact

Twelve of the the top 16 attendance records, including all of the top six, since the Top 28 began in 1961 have been set at the Cajundome, according to figures provided by Davis and Hebert.

The tournament shattered previous attendance records when 69,269 people attend games during the 1999 Top 28. Attendance in 2010 was more typical, reaching 44,840 people.

It’s these droves of people going to restaurants, staying in hotels, filling up gas tanks and finding off-hour entertainment during the five-day tournament that jolts an economic surge into the Lafayette economy. Karen Primeaux, director of convention and sports marketing for the Lafayette Convention and Visitors Commission, said she expects this year’s tournament to have about a $4 million economic impact here. The average spectator will spend about $50 daily, but out of town visitors will spend closer to $125 daily.

The tournament’s move isn’t causing local businesses to shut doors and board windows, but the absence will certainly be a noticeable pain.

"For us, it could be several thousand dollars just for the week or so the tournament is here," said Jess Myhand, general manager at longtime tournament sponsor Prejean’s Restaurant on Northeast Evangeline Thruway. "We could lose $1,000 a day in revenue."Across the street from the Cajundome at the Hilton Garden Inn on West Congress Street, assistant general manager Chris Clark said his 153 room hotel is "pretty full" for this year’s tournament.

"It usually fills us up," Clark said. "We get a lot of business from that tournament, and it not being here is going to definitely impact our business."Though hotels benefit from out-of-towners and Myhand said tournament travelers often make repeat customers, Primeaux said local teams often kick just as much money into the economy."Obviously I’m disappointed because we really enjoyed it being in Lafayette," said Clifton Brown, head coach of boy’s basketball at Lafayette High School, where he’s coached for 15 years. "The players felt at home, like they had a home court advantage, and it really helps with the locals coming out."According to numbers from the 2004-2010 LCVC booking report and provided by the Lafayette Economic Development Authority, five years of the tournament — 2004, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 — brought a $50 million economic impact to the region.

That economic impact is one Shreveport officials are glad to bring to northern Louisiana.

"We’re very excited about hosting the Top 28 in 2012 and beyond," said Kelley Wells, vice president of tourism marketing for the Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau. "We recently hosted the state high school wrestling championship, and the economic impact here was great."

Wells is also director of the newly formed Shreveport Bossier Sports Commission. The Sports Commission was created this year after some Shreveport government entities considered severing ties with the Shreveport Regional Sports Authority. The Shreveport City Council approved its creation in February.That move came after government agencies working with the Shreveport Regional Sports Authority experienced poor communication about what resources and facilities the city would provide for certain events and put the groups in a bind to be a successful host.

Wells said he could not comment at this time if Shreveport would try to keep the Top 28 after this two-year stint.The economic void left by the tournament’s move may also dictate if organizers are able to bring it back to Lafayette after two years. Davis said the Cajundome can’t afford to leave dates wanted for other events open in the chance Lafayette’s next bid for the tournament may beat other cities.

"I just don’t know what’s going to happen four years from now," Davis said. "As an operation, we can’t just sit around for three years and not book those dates."

Small things add up

The bluecoats, a group of about 70 volunteers who help organize all aspects of the tournament, met for one of its final times a week before the tournament to prepare for this year’s Top 28.The men at the meeting were upset by the tournament’s move. For the 15th year, the group is making extra efforts to ensure traveling teams are comfortable in Lafayette.Each team is assigned a host bluecoat, who helps with driving directions, booking hotels and other daily issues. One bluecoat committee attracts numerous local restaurants to provide meals for the teams.

"For anybody who played here, it’s impossible for them to ever forget it because we made it like a college final four," Hebert told the group. "This is the last year. We want to make it the best one. We want to go out in style. I don’t care what your feelings are, they can’t be worse than mine."

Other bluecoats work on logistics, like announcing players before games as if they were running onto a professional team’s home court. Some pre-sell tournament ticket packages to annual attendees and businesses. The attention to detail continues down to a commemorative poster, donated by Angers Graphics, given to every player. It’s a style, art and science the bluecoats fear can’t be duplicated.

"Twenty-five years from now, people are going to say, ‘Remember how good it was when it was in Lafayette,’" said bluecoat volunteer Rusty Cloutier.Hebert remembered watching the tournament at LSU and coaches telling him they lost money traveling to Baton Rouge for the games. Lafayette is not only a more central location for teams across the state, but the bluecoats also found a way to help offset the costs of bringing 15 players, three coaches, a handful of managers and trainers, cheerleaders and others to the tournament.

For each game in the tournament, the bluecoats attract a sponsor to give the principal of each school a $250 check during the game. Win the game, and another $250 check is donated."As far as I know, it’s been great, we have no complaints and they have always done a good job of putting on a fine, first-class tournament for us," Henderson said.

Tommy Henry, who was commissioner of the LHSAA from 1983 until 2007, came to the meeting to thank the bluecoats for the attention to detail."We went to Shreveport for two years, and it was the most miserable time I’ve ever spent with the state championship," he told the group. "All of a sudden y’all came along, and it turned out to be everything I ever wanted in a state championship."

Henry said he wished all LHSAA events could be run as smoothly as the bluecoats run the Top 28.He said the LHSAA executive committee, which accepted the Shreveport bid, should have been reminded how the bluecoats turned the Cajundome into "the Superdome of basketball."

"I know y’all are disappointed about the way things turned out for the future," Henry told the group. "And I don’t know if that’s going to stay. I do know that when you had it, you did it right."When the bid opens up again, Hebert said he certainly isn’t opposed to trying to bring the tournament back, but he wonders if the momentum here will be able to carry past two years.

"The Top 28 is good for Acadiana and good for Lafayette," Hebert said. "It’s good to show the face of Lafayette to the state, and it’s good for the economy."

Athletic Network Footnote: Click here for Gerald Hebert’s Athletic Network Profile