The Dallas Morning News' Greg Riddle conducted an interview with Jamey Harrison, the executive director of the UIL. Here is what he said regarding some of the...
conducted an interview with Jamey Harrison, the executive director of the UIL. Here is what he said regarding some of the biggest questions and How did the UIL approach this realignment from a geographical standpoint? Some of our D-FW Class 6A area districts didn’t seem to make sense, with North Crowley being placed in a district with Duncanville instead of Aledo and Aledo being placed in a district with Arlington ISD schools, for example.
“If you don’t look at it holistically, it may not make sense. But when you look at it holistically, you realize there’s not a ton of options. Every one of those districts in the D-FW area is an eight-team district, so we’ve got to put the puzzle pieces together with ISDs that make sense. Arlington, for example, has five schools. I can’t split them up by rule. They have to be in the same district together. The Crowley schools, there are two. I can’t split them. So if you put the two Crowley schools in with Aledo, that makes that a 10-team district. So who would you take out? There’s not two to take out to the east. There are five, because there are five Arlingtons. We’ve got those five-team, six-team, three-team, two-team ISDs, that by rule have to be together. We’ve got to make all of that fit and try to balance out the number of teams in a district.”Was there much talk about sending Aledo west to be in a district with Midland, Midland Lee, Odessa, Odessa Permian and San Angelo Central?“We had some conversation about that, but again, you can’t look at it in isolation. If we were going to send Aledo out west, we would have had to send Weatherford and Granbury out west also. Those schools are not close to each other. We have had a number of different solutions over the last several years when it comes to West Texas travel. San Angelo to Midland and/or Odessa is not a short trip. But it’s the shortest trip available. You start bringing people all the way from the D-FW area and on a 6A map and you are talking about basketball and volleyball also, that is a long way to travel on a Tuesday night when you have school the next day, so the cost of travel, the amount of time on a bus, the mid-week travel for volleyball and basketball just made that not make sense.” Do you consider the size of schools when you are putting them in districts? District 7-6A will feature four of the 13 largest schools in Texas, with Plano West, Plano East, Coppell and Plano all having enrollments of more than 4,000. The district will also include four Richardson ISD schools, all of which have enrollments below 3,000.“Not really. They are all 6A schools. The three Planos have been with Allen a number of times, when they were the four largest schools in the state. We’re just trying to make it work with that combination of geography and the number of teams in the district.” How much did geography play a part in how 5A Division II Region II was set up for football, where there will be huge travel for first-round playoff games? Dallas ISD schools will have to play schools from Hallsville, Marshall, Mount Pleasant, Nacogdoches, Texarkana Texas and Whitehouse in the first round of the playoffs, with those being District 5 vs. District 6 matchups, instead of having first-round playoff games against District 7, which has D-FW schools such as Arlington Seguin, Ennis, Mansfield Timberview and Midlothian Heritage.“I think huge travel in air quotes is a relative term. We don’t do zoomed-in travel analysis. We have to do analysis on a statewide basis. So if you were going to have 5 and 7 pair up against each other, meaning numbering them 5 and 6, then you have the current 6, which goes all the way to Texarkana, having to come all the way to Brenham for a first-round game. When you look at the map as a whole, this is the least travel for all of the schools. There is always an opportunity to make an individual school or an individual district’s travel better, but we don’t do that if it’s going to increase the burden on other schools.”Was competitive equity considered at all when placing Duncanville and North Crowley in a district together? Those two schools have played in the last two Class 6A Division I state championship games in football.“Well, competitive equity in what sport? They are also in the same district for basketball and volleyball and golf and track and tennis. We can’t look at that. The rules don’t provide for that. We can’t look at competitive equity on a year-by-year basis, because No. 1 a school that has not been good can have a good year, and conversely, a school that has been good can have a down year. Even if you were to look over a historical average, trying to do that for football only, when we have a lot more sports, is just not possible.”“We’ve spent a lot of time talking about 6A. You go out to District 2 with the Midland and Odessa schools and San Angelo and you look to their north and all the way to the Texas border, there is not a single 6A school. If you look to their west, you don’t get to a school until you get to El Paso. If you go to their east, you are talking about D-FW schools, Weatherford, Granbury, Aledo. And to their south, you have to go all the way down to Del Rio. The 6A map is so aggregated and D-FW, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, that it makes anything that isn’t Austin, D-FW, Houston or San Antonio a real challenge.”2026-2028 UIL realignment: Analysis, district lists and must-read stories from SportsDayHSI have worked at The Dallas Morning News since 2000. I cover high school sports as a reporter and help coordinate our coverage. I graduated from TCU, where I ran track and cross country. I previously worked at the Weatherford Democrat, Marshall News Messenger, Amarillo Globe-News and Arlington Morning News.
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