Louisiana High School Sports Meet a Mighty Opponent: Climate Change

Repeated hurricanes have devastated the state’s schools, teams and athletic fields. Ida was the latest reminder of the challenges facing the Sportsman’s Paradise.

GRAND ISLE, La. — Ida was not yet a hurricane when high school coaches across southern Louisiana began preparing for what had become all too familiar, even inevitable. Coach Denny Wright of tiny Grand Isle School texted his cross-country runners and basketball players about the mandatory evacuation on Louisiana’s only inhabited barrier island: “No school. No practice. I’ll let you know when.” Lyle Fitte, the football coach at South Plaquemines High School in Buras, La., evacuated on what became an eight-hour trip to Houston. Buras is 50 miles southeast of New Orleans on a thin, vulnerable peninsula where the Mississippi runs to the Gulf. Fitte’s high school coach rode out Hurricane Katrina in a gym in 2005 when the storm poured 20 feet of water into lower Plaquemines Parish. Fitte, 30, would not make the same reckless decision.