3 options UIL might consider for fall HS sports, including a delay split between classes 6A, 5A and below

UIL is expected to announce its plans for the fall high school sports season soon, and the possibilities are diverse.

Already, several Texas school districts and government entities, including Dallas County, have suspended athletics along with online learning before Sept. 8. Local orders from dozens of schools across the state likely fell to UIL to delay the start of fall sports amid a coronavirus pandemic that has extended into the summer.

In neighboring New Mexico, officials have moved soccer and football from fall to spring. The California high school sports governing body, another powerhouse for high school athletics, announced Monday a modified plan for all sports in the 2020-21 school year, beginning in December or January.

Here are three options that UIL could consider in its plans for the upcoming fall sports season.

A delay to shorten the fall season

For all 11-man soccer teams, the first two or four games of each season face opponents outside of their UIL districts. Coaches use contests to prepare for the rest of the season against challenging opponents, evaluate depth charts and positional contests, and maintain local rivalries.

The same goes for volleyball teams, which participate in tournaments and competitions outside the district during the first weeks of the season.

Out-of-district games do not count toward the playoffs. UIL districts generally include seven to eight teams, making only the last six to seven weeks of the season crucial to tiebreaker and sowing positions

Most soccer teams do not begin playing in the district until September 17 and 19 (Thursday through Saturday). Volleyball teams start about a week early.

Delaying the start of the fall season until the district game would allow teams to participate in the traditional playoff qualification process and the UIL to maintain their playoff schedules for soccer (which ends just before Christmas) and volleyball (which ends just before Thanksgiving). It would also avoid problems with the winter and spring sports schedule.

The TAPPS and SPC private school leagues have already announced plans to follow this model.

Delay only for class 6A and 5A equipment

As Texas has remained a national access point during the coronavirus pandemic, metropolitan areas have undergone a faster spread. Most of UIL’s largest schools are in those areas.

UIL could postpone the start of the season for those schools, which would comply with local orders in the Dallas, Houston, Austin and El Paso areas to close the campuses until at least September 8. The season could be shortened, as detailed above, or extend until 2021.

Meanwhile, Class 4A and younger schools, most of which are located in more rural areas, where the spread of the coronavirus has been less rampant, could start early. The teams would start soccer and volleyball practices on August 3 and aim to play according to the traditional fall schedule.

However, the option would not be ideal for some smaller schools.

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Dallas ISD has seven teams in Class 4A or 3A: Carter, Wilmer-Hutchins, Lincoln, Pinkston, Roosevelt, North Dallas and Madison, but is under Dallas County’s order to suspend instruction and athletics in person until after Day from work.

Sunnyvale, one of the major local 4A football programs, also in Dallas County, would face the same problems.

Suspension from all sports from fall through spring.

This option is probably the one that UIL would consider the least.

The organization already regretted canceling the spring sports season and championships in April, and changing the sports calendar could threaten the potential of a full season for its six spring sports for the second time in the same calendar year.

Fall sports coaches have also expressed concern about the feasibility of playing in the spring. Volleyball, cross country, and tennis coaches consider the overlap between the club and other high school sports. Soccer coaches worry about the physical problems of potentially having two soccer seasons in 2021.

But the precedent for such decisions has appeared at the national level.

The passion and intensity of high school sports in California perhaps more closely resembles the culture of Texas, but the Interscholastic Federation of California has postponed all sports until at least December.

Washington, DC, which also has several private schools competing nationally in soccer, will begin the 2020 soccer season in February 2021.

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