Lycee International adds to local high school sports scene

For decades, the high school landscape within Burbank featured four institutions with competitive athletic programs: two public schools in Burbank High and Burroughs and two private Catholic schools in Providence and Bellarmine-Jefferson.

But three years ago, Lycee International de Los Angeles, a private bilingual French school, moved into the old General Motors Training Center on Riverside Drive adjacent to Pickwick Gardens and set up shop.

“Our first academic year for this school at this Burbank site was the 2013-14 year,” said Head of School Michael Maniska. “The school itself was established in 1978, but it was moved to Burbank and underwent a conversion and it now serves as our middle school and our high school, where we currently have about 325 students.”

The Burbank school is affiliated with other Lycee campuses in Los Feliz, Pasadena, Tarzana and Orange that feature more than 1,100 students in total.

“We are affectionately known as LILA, which is our official acronym,” Maniska said. “The main cornerstone of our school is a bilingual program in English and French. We are credited with the French Ministry of Education to deliver the official French curriculum. ...Typically, the bilingual program begins in preschool and, generally speaking, it’s two-thirds French and one-third English. We offer an international baccalaureate diploma and the students also receive an American high school diploma.

“We are a very unique and interesting school.”

Along with a strong commitment to academics, Maniska said the school also wanted to provide its students with competitive athletic opportunities. With that in mind, LILA embarked on its first season of CIF Southern Section competition during the 2015-16 campaign.

“The thing that’s interesting with a school like this is it’s not like a lot of traditional American schools, which have extensive sports programs,” Maniska said. “With the kids in our bilingual program, the teaching day is longer, so it’s harder for them to be part of local sports associations.

“Sport holds a very unique place in the American school curriculum and we realized that, so we wanted to give our students the opportunity to play those sports. All the studies show us when students exercise, their mental health is better and they feel better and that translates to the classroom.

“There has been a real appetite for sports at the school, the parents have been right behind it and the kids are excited.”

For the 2016-17 school year, LILA will field five sports: boys’ and girls’ basketball, boys’ and girls’ volleyball and fall soccer, which is open to girls and boys. The school’s teams will compete in the International League. Its sporting rival is Le Lycee in West Los Angeles.

“Last year, we started CIF, but it was more of just playing and seeing if we could compete,” athletic director Patrice Filin said. “The kids were happy and they enjoyed the competition. We had some success, so we decided to go forward for this school year and try to build those sports programs at the school.”

“Because we don’t have a gym, we have to play our games and practice away from our campus. But we have been able to find some places to play and even last year we played one of our basketball games at Bell-Jeff.”

For the upcoming girls’ volleyball season, the Lions will play most of their home matches at Olive Recreation Center.

To help alleviate some of the problems of not having home practice facilities, the school is in the midst of installing a multipurpose sports field comprised of premier court, a manufactured composite. The facility will be configured for basketball, volleyball and badminton courts and will feature a track with six lanes, as well as a modified soccer field. The project is expected to be completed in mid-September.

The field is part of a $240,000 beautification project to the back school grounds that will include more shaded areas and green space with more than 20 mature trees added.

“That field will be a big benefit for our athletes,” Filin said. “We are going to go full swing into our CIF sports and we’re looking forward to that.”

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Jeff Tully, jeff.tully@latimes.com

Twitter: @jefftsports