Without electicity, how can there be Friday night lights?

Or, to put it another way — no electricity, no school. No school, no practice. No practice, no football.

However you want to get there, the bottom line remains the same. Tangipahoa Parish Schools Superindent Mark Kolwe announced Wednesday morning that there will be no Friday night football this week in the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav.

Parish schools will be out of session at least until Monday, wiping out the opening weekend of high school play, which included nine games involving area schools.

With spotty communications available on Wednesday, most area coaches could not be reached for comment. Poncha-toula coach Mike Baiamonte would normally have been breaking down film and preparing to hit the practice field to get ready to play at Woodlawn-Baton Rouge.

Instead, Baiamonte took a break from hammering nails and helping repair his father-in-law's damaged fence to answer his phone. Baiamonte said that since the team can't even practice, no good could come of the cancellation of the season opener.

“I don't ever like to break routine,” Baiamonte said. “I don't think high school kids handle that well. Routine is what makes it easy for teenage kids. This has broken ours and I don't like it, but we have to deal with it.

“It's kind of a holiday, I guess.”

In addition to Ponchatoula's cancelled visit to the hard-hit Baton Rouge area, Hammond High's game at Catholic-Baton Rouge was also cancelled.

Other games wiped out include Amite at Franklinton, Desire Street at Independence, Loranger at Springfield, Epis-copal-BR at Albany, Pope John Paul II at Jewel Sumner and St. Thomas Aquinas at Kentwood.

Oak Forest was scheduled to open its MPSA conference race at Silliman Institute in Clinton. OFA officials could not be reached Wednesday, but power outages will likely affect that game as well.

LHSAA Commissioner Kenny Henderson sent out a release Tuesday outlining how the organization would handle the situation.

“Due to each part of the state being affected differently with varying degrees of damage and destruction, it has been determined we will handle the contests as we have in the past, with each contest being left to the discretion of the high school principals on a local level,” Henderson said.

Under LHSAA rules, any football game that is postponed must be played by the following Monday, or it cannot be played.

LHSAA rules dictate that when non-district games are cancelled, they are not counted in determining power points. That means that in most cases, when teams’ power rankings are calculated at the end of the season, the total points accumulated will be divided by nine instead of ten.