UIL move plunges schedules into chaos
Texas high school football teams will have to get creative.
The University Interscholastic League’s revised fall sports calendar has created a bevy of scheduling issues, because schools from different classifications that had been scheduled to meet in nondistrict play now have different start dates.
Class 5A and 6A will start their seasons Sept. 24, but the smaller four classes will stay on the original schedule and open Aug. 27.
“I’d love to have a full 10-game season,” Dawson coach Mike Allison said. “That may not be realistic, because every district and every school is in a different situation. But just the fact that we’ll be able to get the seven district games in is huge.”
Class 6A Dawson lost its Week 2 game against Heights because HISD won’t let its teams compete while the district is doing virtual learning.
“There will be some scrambling, and you have to make your decisions based on what’s best for the kids,” Allison said.
A good example of the changes that will be needed can be found at Needville, a Class 4A school. Needville was to open against St.
Thomas of TAPPS and Santa Fe of Class 5A. Neither St. Thomas nor Santa Fe will play before Sept. 24 now.
As of Tuesday, Splendora coach Marcus Schulz had found one regular-season replacement in Tyler Chapel Hill, a program coached by Schulz’s friend and former Crosby coach Jeff Riordan. Class 5A Splendora’s entire nondistrict schedule was wiped out.
“Among the smaller schools, they may not have played 5A schools, so their schedules are perfectly fine,” Schulz said. “We’ve been on the phone trying to find games.”
The UIL is encouraging districts to think of alternative ways to complete their seasons, especially when it comes to league games.
It could mean playing district games ahead of the nondistrict schedule to ensure playoff teams
are determined by the Dec. 5 deadline for 6A and 5A schools.
Retired Kashmere coach Garry Dunham suggested the option of zone play, which was used in previous seasons interrupted by hurricanes. It splits schools in a league into two groups, with the teams in each group playing each other and the top finishers meeting in a championship.
North Shore coach Jon Kay said everything is on the table.
“It’s critical that you are able to certify your district by Dec. 5,” Kay said. “To me, with the information that was released today, that was the most important for us in football. … If you have disruptions through the course of that district season, it could come down to coin flips and creative ways to find out what four teams represent your district. … Do you build in some extra weeks in there in anticipation of some hiccups? If you do that, does that replace some of your nondistrict games, and how do you go about scheduling that?”
Some of the season’s most highprofile nondistrict games are still on, for now.
Kay’s North Shore team opens 2020 against Shadow Creek in a meeting of the defending Class 6A Division I and 5A Division I state champions. The game is tentatively set for Sept. 25. North Shore and Shadow Creek already had nondistrict games against De La Salle (Calif.) and St. Joseph’s Prep
(Pa.) canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Atascocita still is set to visit Allen and host Denton Guyer, but Humble ISD athletic director Troy Kite said the schedule is a fluid situation.
“These last four months have felt like four years,” Kite said. “To have a light at the end of the tunnel to know that we still get to go to Allen, that’s an exciting thing.
Knowing that Denton Guyer is still going to come here, that’s exciting too. Now we just have to make sure that we’re all doing our part. But like I said, things can change at any time.”