The decline and death of soccer's 1st dynasty: Warren Easton
Mar 22, 2013 12:12:52 GMT -6
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Post by Scott Crawford on Mar 22, 2013 12:12:52 GMT -6
When St. Louis Catholic won its fourth state championship in a row last month, the media erred in saying that it was the first time that feat had every been accomplished in Louisiana high school soccer history. That title of first belongs to a school in New Orleans' Mid-City, a school with a long tradition of producing excellent athletes and scholars, Warren Easton. The school boasts quite a tradition. High school football in New Orleans began when Easton played a group from Tulane in 1896. Numerous doctors, lawyers, generals, and a New Orleans mayor who left a mark on the state graduated from the school. Today, however, that school has made more headlines for being a recipient of Sandra Bullock's philanthropy than its academics.
Beginning in 1978, Warren Easton began the greatest seven year run in Louisiana boys high school soccer history. Seven trips to the semifinals. Six trips to the finals. Five championships. Four championships in a row. Other boys programs have approached that greatness, but none has yet to equal the greatness of the Warren Easton reign of the late 70s and early 80s.
Fast forward to 2005. Warren Easton wins yet another district title, taking District I-8 with relative ease. They enter the playoffs as a favorite to advance, and do so, beating John Ehret in the Bi-District round. The Regional Round, however, would not be so easy, as the Eagles bowed out in an 8-0 blowout to Caddo Magnet.
That 8-0 loss would be the last game in Warren Easton soccer history. Katrina roared ashore six months later, leaving a devastating wake behind her. Warren Easton remained closed for the entire 2005-2006 school year. When the school reopened, the soccer program did not reopen with it.
The floodwaters may have been the death knell in that storied program, but the program was dying years before Katrina came ashore.
Today, eight years after that trip to the 2005 playoffs, soccer remains dead at Warren Easton. There are no indications that the school will field a team next season either. So just what happened at Warren Easton?
Looking back, soccer owes at least part of its rise at Warren Easton to the integration of the schools. Integration, of course, was required by the 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown vs. Board of Education. New Orleans delayed implementing that decision until 1960, and even then it was done at a snail's pace. Racial riots were a problem throughout the States in those years, and New Orleans' slow pace for change pushed the integration of Warren Easton back all the way to August 30, 1967, a year before high school soccer in Louisiana was founded. The Times Picayune, in typical Times Picayune fashion bragged about the city's successful integration. "New Orleans systems resumed classes without a hint of racial disturbances which greeted last year's school opening in St. Bernard and Plaquemines."
Before 1967, Warren Easton was an all-white school A look at the 1964 Warren Easton Yearbook shows an all-white school. None of the names listed are Hispanic. Were Hispanics allowed into white Orleans Parish Schools before integration was mandated by the courts? That I do not know, but the issue becomes complicated as a result of the Isleno heritage (immigrant movement from the Spanish Canary Islands to the areas around New Orleans in the 18th century) and New Orleans' role in filibustering in Central America during the 1850s. Having a Hispanic or Spanish name in New Orleans did not carry the baggage it might have at the same time in other American cities due to that long history and Hispanic influence in New Orleans. Nonetheless, Warren East appears to have had few, if any, Hispanic immigrant students before integration.
What does seem likely, however, is that Warren Easton gained many Hispanic students in the 1970s. Many of the students were first generation children of workers who had come from Honduras. The New Orleans-Hondruas connection goes all the way back to the 1850s with the previously mentioned New Orleans-led filibuster campaigns to overthrow Central American governments. In the 1920s and later, New Orleans and Honduras had a very strong relationship, largely due to bananas. Honduras grew bananas. New Orleans imported them and then shipped them throughout the rest of the States. The conduit for this exchange was Sam Zemurray's Cuyamel Fruit Company and later the United Fruit Company [which later became Chiquita Bananas]. Zemurray was in some ways similar to the filibusters who tried to establish American colonies in Central America. If Honduran government was not helping his business, he would pay mercenaries to stage a military coup. The new Honduran government would grant Zemurray whatever he wanted.
As the banana trade resumed, so did interaction between New Orleans and Honduras. Many Honduran workers connected to the banana trade settled in New Orleans, and later in Kenner. In the 2010 Census, more than 25,000 Americans who identified themselves as Honduran lived in the New Orleans Metro region, giving the region the sixth largest Honduran population in the entire United States, despite being the 45th overall largest metro region in the nation. Whether this history gives an explanation for the arrival of the Honduran-born "Dean of New Orleans Soccer", Carlos Ross Mitchell, or not is unknown. The connection is worth noting.
Hondurans did not initially move to a concentrated area in New Orleans, but Mid-City was an attractive spot for many. Houses were newer and cheaper than in many of the other areas of the city during the 1950s. By the 1970s, it does seem likely that Warren Easton had a significant Honduran student population. The soccer-loving population in Warren Easton's school district would receive boosts with the large Cuban immigration to New Orleans in the 1960s, and later, with the large Vietnamese population that arrived during the 1970s and 1980s. Vietnamese players are said by a March, 1986 article by Times Picayune writer Ted Lewis to have first played for the Eagles in 1986.
By the 1980s, school zone from which Warren Easton drew its students was international, perhaps more so than any other district in Orleans Parish. On March 12, 1985, the Times Picayune did an article on soccer in Mid-City. The writer mentions daily games on the neutral ground of Jeff Davis. Teams were divided by nationalities, and several of the people interviewed were students at Warren Easton.
Louisiana high school soccer was in its early years in the 1970s when Warren Easton first fielded a team. Under Coach Donald Naylor, Warren Easton ascended to the top very quickly. Most of the players were Hispanic. Some notables included Elvin Garcia and Hugo Martinez. Easton would win titles in the New Orleans Interscholastic Soccer League in 1978, 1979, 1980, and 1981. A truly statewide high school soccer organization, the Louisiana Interscholastic Soccer League was organized after the last NISL championship in 1981. Easton would play in two of the first three LISA championships. Both championships were against Mid-City rival, Jesuit, with Easton winning one and the Jays evening the series a year later. That loss portended a changing of the guard. Easton was on the way out while Jesuit was establishing itself as the program not only of Mid-City but of the entire state.
There seems to have been some trouble with the soccer team in the mid-1980s. Delores Duvall, a noted disciplinarian was given the reigns that no one else wanted. She guided the team to the playoffs most years she was there, but the team would never regain its stature from the late 70s and early 80s
What exactly happened to start the decline? Perhaps it was Coach Naylor's departure. Perhaps the administration at Warren Easton was unsupportive. Perhaps the talent pool dried up as many Honduran families moved to Kenner.
Or perhaps it was a combination of all of these factors with the most important factor of them all: the burgeoning soccer culture in white middle and upper class New Orleans. As soccer clubs at Lafreniere and Carrollton grew in the 1980s, the soccer talent stock at predominantly white schools like Jesuit, Country Day, De La Salle greatly increased. These schools would begin to dominate the sport, as the sport underwent a socio-cultural change. Slidell High would win four titles in the 1980s, thanks largely to a well run club program that was begun there in the 1970s. Slidell's top talent during this period, however, was of a Hispanic origin.
Warren Easton would slowly become a less diverse school in the late 1980s. Thanks in part to middle class flight to the suburbs, Warren Easton became predominantly African American. Soccer within the New Orleans African American community has never been very popular, so it should be no surprise that as Warren Easton became less diverse, its soccer program saw less success.
Having said that, even into the early 2000s, Warren Easton was a regular playoff participant. Nonetheless, their continued playoff presence was due more to a watered-down district than its own strength, as blowouts in the playoffs were the norm in this period. During this time, the team was about half African American and half Vietnamese American with a handful of other nationalities represented. Warren Easton's self-described "bad reputation" would come out again in 2001. It was in a Bi-District playoff game against Catholic of Baton Rouge that a large fight broke out. Easton lost 8-0.
To see Easton's decline that began in the mid-1980s, we only need to look at the past playoff results. The last time Warren Easton achieved success beyond the Regional Round in the playoffs was 1991. The 90s decade was a rollercoaster that coasted from mediocrity to lowness and back again with little remarkable. The program's last big victory came in 1999 when the Eagles knocked out Brother Martin from the playoffs in the opening round. That Brother Martin team would win State the following year. 2000 marked the last year that Easton field a competitive team on the state level, but even with that talent, the team did not advance past the second round. The decline after 2000 would be precipitous and would not slow until the program came to a crashing halt in 2005 with the temporary storm-related closure of the school.
The story of Warren Easton soccer is one of meteoric climb and descent nearly as meteoric. Like a log headed downstream on the Mississippi during the Spring, the program was affected by a stream of international, national, and metropolitan cultural forces. Warren Easton's soccer program has largely been forgotten, stowed away in old newspaper archives, but its place among the all-time greatest Louisiana high school soccer programs is already cemented. Will the school revive its historic program, a program that represents greatness at the start of the state's soccer history? I hope to see a dedicated coach reboot the program soon.
Beginning in 1978, Warren Easton began the greatest seven year run in Louisiana boys high school soccer history. Seven trips to the semifinals. Six trips to the finals. Five championships. Four championships in a row. Other boys programs have approached that greatness, but none has yet to equal the greatness of the Warren Easton reign of the late 70s and early 80s.
Fast forward to 2005. Warren Easton wins yet another district title, taking District I-8 with relative ease. They enter the playoffs as a favorite to advance, and do so, beating John Ehret in the Bi-District round. The Regional Round, however, would not be so easy, as the Eagles bowed out in an 8-0 blowout to Caddo Magnet.
That 8-0 loss would be the last game in Warren Easton soccer history. Katrina roared ashore six months later, leaving a devastating wake behind her. Warren Easton remained closed for the entire 2005-2006 school year. When the school reopened, the soccer program did not reopen with it.
The floodwaters may have been the death knell in that storied program, but the program was dying years before Katrina came ashore.
Today, eight years after that trip to the 2005 playoffs, soccer remains dead at Warren Easton. There are no indications that the school will field a team next season either. So just what happened at Warren Easton?
Looking back, soccer owes at least part of its rise at Warren Easton to the integration of the schools. Integration, of course, was required by the 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown vs. Board of Education. New Orleans delayed implementing that decision until 1960, and even then it was done at a snail's pace. Racial riots were a problem throughout the States in those years, and New Orleans' slow pace for change pushed the integration of Warren Easton back all the way to August 30, 1967, a year before high school soccer in Louisiana was founded. The Times Picayune, in typical Times Picayune fashion bragged about the city's successful integration. "New Orleans systems resumed classes without a hint of racial disturbances which greeted last year's school opening in St. Bernard and Plaquemines."
Before 1967, Warren Easton was an all-white school A look at the 1964 Warren Easton Yearbook shows an all-white school. None of the names listed are Hispanic. Were Hispanics allowed into white Orleans Parish Schools before integration was mandated by the courts? That I do not know, but the issue becomes complicated as a result of the Isleno heritage (immigrant movement from the Spanish Canary Islands to the areas around New Orleans in the 18th century) and New Orleans' role in filibustering in Central America during the 1850s. Having a Hispanic or Spanish name in New Orleans did not carry the baggage it might have at the same time in other American cities due to that long history and Hispanic influence in New Orleans. Nonetheless, Warren East appears to have had few, if any, Hispanic immigrant students before integration.
What does seem likely, however, is that Warren Easton gained many Hispanic students in the 1970s. Many of the students were first generation children of workers who had come from Honduras. The New Orleans-Hondruas connection goes all the way back to the 1850s with the previously mentioned New Orleans-led filibuster campaigns to overthrow Central American governments. In the 1920s and later, New Orleans and Honduras had a very strong relationship, largely due to bananas. Honduras grew bananas. New Orleans imported them and then shipped them throughout the rest of the States. The conduit for this exchange was Sam Zemurray's Cuyamel Fruit Company and later the United Fruit Company [which later became Chiquita Bananas]. Zemurray was in some ways similar to the filibusters who tried to establish American colonies in Central America. If Honduran government was not helping his business, he would pay mercenaries to stage a military coup. The new Honduran government would grant Zemurray whatever he wanted.
As the banana trade resumed, so did interaction between New Orleans and Honduras. Many Honduran workers connected to the banana trade settled in New Orleans, and later in Kenner. In the 2010 Census, more than 25,000 Americans who identified themselves as Honduran lived in the New Orleans Metro region, giving the region the sixth largest Honduran population in the entire United States, despite being the 45th overall largest metro region in the nation. Whether this history gives an explanation for the arrival of the Honduran-born "Dean of New Orleans Soccer", Carlos Ross Mitchell, or not is unknown. The connection is worth noting.
Hondurans did not initially move to a concentrated area in New Orleans, but Mid-City was an attractive spot for many. Houses were newer and cheaper than in many of the other areas of the city during the 1950s. By the 1970s, it does seem likely that Warren Easton had a significant Honduran student population. The soccer-loving population in Warren Easton's school district would receive boosts with the large Cuban immigration to New Orleans in the 1960s, and later, with the large Vietnamese population that arrived during the 1970s and 1980s. Vietnamese players are said by a March, 1986 article by Times Picayune writer Ted Lewis to have first played for the Eagles in 1986.
By the 1980s, school zone from which Warren Easton drew its students was international, perhaps more so than any other district in Orleans Parish. On March 12, 1985, the Times Picayune did an article on soccer in Mid-City. The writer mentions daily games on the neutral ground of Jeff Davis. Teams were divided by nationalities, and several of the people interviewed were students at Warren Easton.
Louisiana high school soccer was in its early years in the 1970s when Warren Easton first fielded a team. Under Coach Donald Naylor, Warren Easton ascended to the top very quickly. Most of the players were Hispanic. Some notables included Elvin Garcia and Hugo Martinez. Easton would win titles in the New Orleans Interscholastic Soccer League in 1978, 1979, 1980, and 1981. A truly statewide high school soccer organization, the Louisiana Interscholastic Soccer League was organized after the last NISL championship in 1981. Easton would play in two of the first three LISA championships. Both championships were against Mid-City rival, Jesuit, with Easton winning one and the Jays evening the series a year later. That loss portended a changing of the guard. Easton was on the way out while Jesuit was establishing itself as the program not only of Mid-City but of the entire state.
There seems to have been some trouble with the soccer team in the mid-1980s. Delores Duvall, a noted disciplinarian was given the reigns that no one else wanted. She guided the team to the playoffs most years she was there, but the team would never regain its stature from the late 70s and early 80s
What exactly happened to start the decline? Perhaps it was Coach Naylor's departure. Perhaps the administration at Warren Easton was unsupportive. Perhaps the talent pool dried up as many Honduran families moved to Kenner.
Or perhaps it was a combination of all of these factors with the most important factor of them all: the burgeoning soccer culture in white middle and upper class New Orleans. As soccer clubs at Lafreniere and Carrollton grew in the 1980s, the soccer talent stock at predominantly white schools like Jesuit, Country Day, De La Salle greatly increased. These schools would begin to dominate the sport, as the sport underwent a socio-cultural change. Slidell High would win four titles in the 1980s, thanks largely to a well run club program that was begun there in the 1970s. Slidell's top talent during this period, however, was of a Hispanic origin.
Warren Easton would slowly become a less diverse school in the late 1980s. Thanks in part to middle class flight to the suburbs, Warren Easton became predominantly African American. Soccer within the New Orleans African American community has never been very popular, so it should be no surprise that as Warren Easton became less diverse, its soccer program saw less success.
Having said that, even into the early 2000s, Warren Easton was a regular playoff participant. Nonetheless, their continued playoff presence was due more to a watered-down district than its own strength, as blowouts in the playoffs were the norm in this period. During this time, the team was about half African American and half Vietnamese American with a handful of other nationalities represented. Warren Easton's self-described "bad reputation" would come out again in 2001. It was in a Bi-District playoff game against Catholic of Baton Rouge that a large fight broke out. Easton lost 8-0.
To see Easton's decline that began in the mid-1980s, we only need to look at the past playoff results. The last time Warren Easton achieved success beyond the Regional Round in the playoffs was 1991. The 90s decade was a rollercoaster that coasted from mediocrity to lowness and back again with little remarkable. The program's last big victory came in 1999 when the Eagles knocked out Brother Martin from the playoffs in the opening round. That Brother Martin team would win State the following year. 2000 marked the last year that Easton field a competitive team on the state level, but even with that talent, the team did not advance past the second round. The decline after 2000 would be precipitous and would not slow until the program came to a crashing halt in 2005 with the temporary storm-related closure of the school.
The story of Warren Easton soccer is one of meteoric climb and descent nearly as meteoric. Like a log headed downstream on the Mississippi during the Spring, the program was affected by a stream of international, national, and metropolitan cultural forces. Warren Easton's soccer program has largely been forgotten, stowed away in old newspaper archives, but its place among the all-time greatest Louisiana high school soccer programs is already cemented. Will the school revive its historic program, a program that represents greatness at the start of the state's soccer history? I hope to see a dedicated coach reboot the program soon.
