‘DRASTIC’ CHANGE BY UIL PRIOR TO ’24-25 SCHOOL YEAR | Sports split into two divisions, beginning immediately

Maybe the University Interscholastic League had the same philosophy as the late “Rowdy” Roddy Piper: Just when you think you’ve got the answers, we change the questions.

That’s what the UIL – the governing body of Texas high school extracurricular activities — did, effectively, on Tuesday when their legislative council changed the entire landscape of sports in the state by splitting the districts into divisions once postseason play begins.

It was already that way in football: for instance, Kilgore and Henderson are in Class 4A, Division I for football, the “bigger” division, and Carthage and Gilmer are in 4A-Division II. Kilgore and Henderson can’t face Carthage and Gilmer in the 4A football playoffs, because there’s a 4A playoff path for Division I – “big schools,” those with larger enrollments – and one for Division II, those with smaller enrollments. Kilgore typically does play Carthage and Gilmer in non-district games, and will again in the 2024 regular season.

Now, this coming season, a form of that will happen for other sports, like volleyball, basketball, baseball, softball and soccer.

What will happen is the top four programs from each district make the playoffs, like normal, and then they’ll be divided into Division I and Division II. Let’s take the most recently completed baseball season as an example.

The top four teams were (in order of finish) Spring Hill, Carthage, Kilgore and Henderson. In this case, Spring Hill and Carthage are both smaller than Kilgore and Henderson based on enrollment figures during the most recent UIL realignment, numbers submitted during fall, 2023. Thusly, Spring Hill and Carthage would go into the 4A Division II bracket – Kilgore and Henderson would go Division I.

And that would be across the board for every sport mentioned: basketball (girls and boys), soccer (girls and boys), softball, and volleyball.

Like in football, then, there will no longer be one state champion for each classification in basketball. There will be two: a Class 6A-Division I champion and a Class 6A-Division II champion; a Class 5A-Division I champ and a Class 5A-Division II champ, and so on.

It’s a drastic change – that’s how the Dallas Morning News referred to it, and they’re right, no doubt about it, one that we’ll all be following, especially when those sports begin. Volleyball will be the one that sees it first, as it begins in August, along with football.

Other items of note to come out of the legislative council meeting:

• It was announced that UIL Executive Director Dr. Charles Breithaupt plans to retire following this coming school year. Breithaupt, who became the executive director of the UIL in 2009, has been with the organization since 1992 after serving almost two decades prior as a coach, an athletic director, an assistant principal and a principal.
• The Standing Committee on Athletics authorized a proposal to add a shot clock to both boys and girls basketball, which would also greatly change those games and half and second-half-ending strategies.
• There were several items in which the committee took no action, such as changing the mercy rule in softball; adding one for boys and girls soccer; adding disc golf, boys volleyball, girls flag football, ice hockey (yes), and archery as sanctioned sports; adding 3A and below soccer as sanctioned sport (currently, 3A programs play “up” with 4A programs, like Sabine, Tatum, etc.); placing mileage limitations on first-round football playoff games; requiring facilities of a particular size to host football playoff games; allowing part-time employees to be a head coach of a sport; and allowing college students to volunteer coach.