Opinion Article District 14 - 4A D2

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http://seguingazette.com/opinion/com...0e8a48d0e.html

Kibbe: The mess UIL created in realignment
Scot Kibbe Guest Column

No one can say what the dunderheads who run the University Interscholastic League (UIL) were thinking when they drew up District 14-4A-II for football last winter.

Perhaps they were convinced that 2020 would be Austin Eastside Memorial’s breakthrough year. Or that if losing builds character then losing really big must build really big character.

Or perhaps they just enjoy movies where unarmed men were thrown to the lions for entertainment in ancient Rome.

Whatever the reason, the governing body for Texas high school athletics put together one eye-popping district. It consists of regional powerhouses Navarro and Wimberley, who met in the state quarterfinals last season; Eastside Memorial, which has scored just two touchdowns in the past two seasons; and three charter schools — Austin Achieve, San Antonio Young Mens’ Leadership Academy (YMLA) and Manor New Tech.

Austin Achieve played six-man football last year. YMLA played varsity football for the first time when they finally started their season last week.

Manor New Tech won three games over the past two years. Two were over Eastside Memorial and the third was last week’s game against YMLA.

Navarro and Wimberley appealed the wildly unbalanced district and worked with other area schools on an alternative proposal. They rightly pointed out that the neighboring district, 13-4A-II, is one of the toughest in the state with Cuero, Giddings, Navasota, La Grange, Smithville and Gonzales. Surely those districts could be redrawn for better competition.

The UIL Appeals Committee looked at the proposal and rejected it, just as they did with every school that appealed its placement this year. The vote was 7-0.

It is appropriate that the vote was a shut out because it created so many of them.

One of those was Navarro’s 81-0 blanking of Manor New Tech. The next week, Wimberley rolled the same team by an 88-0 score while the Navarro was demolishing Eastside Memorial 94-0.

On Friday, the Panthers scored 68 points by half time on their way to an 82-7 demolition of Austin Achieve. Eastside Memorial forfeited its game against Wimberley on the same night.

With these kinds of games, this district does not benefit anyone.

Not the teams that are getting trounced by these margins. They are years away from being able to compete with Navarro and Wimberley. These games are not making them better, just sorer. Yes, two of them will find themselves in the playoffs, but there they will find another blowout awaiting them in the first round.

Not Navarro and Wimberley players, who are missing out on the experience they will need when they hit the playoffs. And where is the fun in playing four games against such non-competitive opponents?

Not Navarro and Wimberley coaches, who must figure out in all of these games how to keep their teams conditioned and improving while keeping the victory margin PG-rated. They may decline all penalties against their opponent, kick field goals on first down, and try other means to control the score. But they know that many people will judge that they have run up the score without seeing what actually happened in the game.

Not the Navarro and Wimberley fans, who miss the excitement of seeing their teams in a competitive district. Instead, they watch some tedious football in a quiet stadium — these four schools bring very few fans to their games.

The UIL could have done as the appeal proposed and split these four non-competitive programs into different districts. Better still, they could require charter schools to play at a lower level until they show they can at least stay on the field with most of the teams in a higher classification.

But the UIL did none of that.

And, because they realign in two-year cycles, we will get to see all this again in 2021.

[stardog]

Same setup in 5A-2 district 14. Liberty Hill (who is winning every game by 70+ to 80+ points per game) and Marble Falls were put with Austin ISD schools (who thought that it was a flag football league).