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HOUSTON — The University Interscholastic League has its next realignment coming up in February, but it won’t be adding a Class 7A.
“We don’t have the numbers for a true 7A conference right now,” UIL deputy director Jamey Harrison said Monday at the Texas High School Coaches Association’s 91st annual convention and coaching school. “It’s going to be some time before we have enough schools that are significantly larger than most of the others in 6A.”
But changes to the playoff brackets could be coming in a realignment cycle beyond 2024. The UIL is looking at a couple of options that would further separate the state’s largest schools beyond how it is already divided with 6A.
“We’re looking at a completely different model where you might create a 7A playoff bracket but continue to group for district play with 6A schools. That’s a very real possibility,” Harrison said. “There are a number of ways to do that. That could be adding a third football division in 6A and adding a Division II for all other sports, that could be creating a 7A versus splitting them off.
“We’ve got models that work going either direction, but no models that don’t have some problems. We will work to see if we can find some model outside of just a true 7A.”
Harrison said that no changes will be made for the upcoming realignment.
Currently, there are 15 schools in Texas that have an enrollment of more than 4,000, a list topped by Allen with an enrollment of 7,102. But Class 6A is for schools with 2,225 students and above, so there is a large enrollment gap between teams that share the same district and that compete in the same playoff bracket.
Harrison said after the last realignment in 2022 that the biggest problem the UIL needs to address is the enrollment disparity in 4A.
“Top to bottom, that is the most challenging conference that we have. That is why it has the least number of schools,” Harrison said. “You just don’t have 200 schools within roughly a 2.0 enrollment disparity, meaning that the top is about twice the size as the bottom. The only way to really address that without creating a problem in 3A is to put less schools in 4A. How you put less schools in 4A, we’ve got a lot of creative options to consider, but you have to choose one that doesn’t just push that enrollment disparity problem into another conference.”
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