Soccer becomes 10th CSAL sport

Above: St. Catherine of Siena (in yellow) and St. Ann battle it out in the senior varsity finals of CSAL soccer. (Photos by Beth Donze, Clarion Herald)

By BETH DONZE
Clarion Herald

This year, for the first time in its history, the Catholic School Athletic League (CSAL) added coed soccer to the complement of competitive sports offered to Catholic elementary school athletes in the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

Because of uncertainties wrought by COVID-19, the initially hoped-for full season was reduced to a four-week tournament in soccer’s inaugural year of 2022 – contests that culminated Jan. 31 with junior and senior varsity finals at host school St. Philip Neri in Metairie. (see photos of this year’s championship teams at the end of this story )

In future years, the CSAL’s soccer season will follow boys’ flag football and will include a full, six-week season played in October and November, said CSAL co-commissioners Thomas Boudreaux and Dennise Brennan.

“We’ve had a great response to soccer – we had 24 senior teams and 10 junior teams competing this year,” marveled Brennan, who also serves as athletic director, coach and P.E. teacher at St. Matthew the Apostle in River Ridge, and coordinates CYO athletics for the teens of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

So why is CSAL soccer debuting only now?

In addition to scheduling nightmares caused by hurricanes and COVID-19, the sport  was slow to come under the CSAL’s fold due to the many soccer leagues with bigger reaches that satisfied many youngsters’ needs as the sport exploded in popularity.

Also, because soccer requires a large playing field, only a handful of Catholic elementary school campuses were able to provide on-site grounds on which students could practice and compete, the commissioners said. The official number of school-based fields has since grown to eight.

“Since soccer has become more interesting to the kids, a bunch of the schools that had football fields began buying soccer goals and offering soccer at school,” Brennan said.

Adding soccer as a CSAL sport also fills another need: it finally enables seventh graders to be the eldest, most experienced players on the field in a given game, whereas other soccer leagues permit eighth graders to compete at the elementary-school level. As a result, CSAL soccer will give more children a stab at playing competitively, the commissioners said.

“Winning, of course, is important to our coaches and players, but I think we are able to get more kids involved who might not be playing otherwise,” said Boudreaux, who played multiple CSAL sports himself in the mid-1960s as a student at St. Stephen in New Orleans, and who coached and taught history for 43 years at St. Christopher Elementary School in Metairie.

“The CSAL is also the only league that offers sports like indoor ball – a sport you can play even if you’re not that super big, super fast athlete,” Boudreaux said. “It’s the sense of sportsmanship that we try to uphold.”

With pre-game prayer and respectful fans among its calling cards, CSAL is known for providing “a safe, Christian environment for the kids to play in,” added Brennan.

“It’s a ministry that is done within the Catholic schools,” she said. “You’re not just a coach to them; you’re a minister and a second mother or father to them!”

Both commissioners said one of their biggest thrills is seeing the friendships forged among players, coaches and officials in those all-important elementary-school years. They also proudly watch as some of their young athletes go on to excel in high school and beyond.

“Sometimes you don’t realize the impact you have until much later,” Boudreaux said.

In addition to coed soccer, the CSAL organizes full-season and tournament play for Catholic school children in grades 4-7 in the following sports:

• Boys’ basketball

• Girls’ basketball

• Coed bowling (tournament)

• Boys’ flag football

• Girls’ flag football (tournament)

• Boys’ indoor ball

• Girls’ indoor ball

• Boys’ volleyball (tournament)

• Girls’ volleyball

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In the CSAL soccer finals, played Jan. 31 at St. Philip Neri, St. Ann (above) took the senior varsity crown against runners-up St. Catherine of Siena.















In JV action, St. Dominic (above) edged St. Charles Borromeo after a 2-2 tie in regulation and a 3-2 penalty kick shootout.