Will ’Cats district change in 2010?
Posted on 31. Jan, 2010 by Brian Porter in '09 Season
The biennial UIL reclassification and realignment for the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years will be released at 9 a.m. Monday, Feb. 1, through the UIL Web site at www.uil.utexas.edu.
Alignments are designed through enrollment figures submitted to the UIL by its member schools in October and will serve as football and basketball districts for the next two school years.
Plano is currently aligned in District 8-5A with Allen, Dallas Jesuit, McKinney Boyd, the other two Plano ISD schools and Wylie. District 8-5A participates in the Region 1 alignment.
There seem to always be more questions than answers for Plano entering realignments. It seems clear the UIL favors keeping Allen and the Plano ISD in the same alignment. But some of the same questions remain. Will Wylie stay above the Class 5A attendance line? Will McKinney have more than one Class 5A campus? Where will Jesuit Prep go?
Most girls basketball coaches didn’t like this current alignment. With Jesuit Prep in a 7-team alignment, it meant member schools had just five district opponents and caused for odd scheduling when the boys teams had six district opponents – or two additional games. Football teams were required to play four non-district games with a bye, and would likely have the UIL return it to an even numbered alignment of eight or six teams.
These are all questions which must be answered by the UIL, but former PISD athletics director Cliff Odenwald will be heading the process as the UIL’s director of athletics and certainly has an understanding for the Plano schools.
In alignments of this decade, Plano has been in districts including the Richardson ISD and the Lewisville ISD, among the aforementioned districts. It has been placed in both Region 1 and Region 2 and under Odenwald noted its preference to be placed in Region 2.
