UNIVERSITY INTERSCHOLASTIC LEAGUE

The 'University Interscholastic League' or 'UIL' is an organization which creates rules for and sometimes administers almost all athletic, music, and academic contests for public elementary and secondary schools in the American state of Texas. Activities range from American football to marching band competitions. The UIL does not administer Academic Decathlon competitions, however. The UIL was originally created by the University of Texas at Austin to provide a rule-making body for athletic and academic events. It has since grown to many times its original size and vision, and now strives to create rules for fair play in all inter-school contests. Its mission, according to the UIL, is to foster good sportsmanship and character building among competitors.
From 1940 to 1970, an era of racial segregation in Texas, the Prairie View Interscholastic League (PVIL), headquartered at Prairie View A&M University, served as a separate parallel organization for African-American public high schools in Texas. The all-white UIL agreed to admit PVIL member schools in 1965. Black schools began UIL competition beginning in the 1967-68 school year. After the 1969-70 school year, the UIL fully absorbed all PVIL member schools.[1]
The UIL generally governs only public high schools. Activities for non-public schools are governed by completely separate bodies, the largest of which is the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools (TAPPS). However, non-public schools are allowed to join the UIL if they meet extensive prerequisites, such as private schools must compete in one league above their own (ie a 4A private school must compete in a 5A league). Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas and Houston Strake Jesuit were the first, and only thus far, private schools to have been granted UIL membership beginning with the 2003-2004 academic school year. This came after extensive court battles and negotiations from both the UIL's lawyers and Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas's and Strake Jesuit's joint lawyers. Previously, both Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas and Strake Jesuit were members of the defunct Texas Christian Interscholastic League (TCIL), but after that league's demise both schools refused entry into TAPPS and decided to further pursue their decade-long battle of gaining membership into the UIL.

Contents

Groupings

Events

Miscellaneous

External links

Groupings

Schools are broken down with a letter classification to separate them from other schools of varying sizes. The purpose is to ensure that schools compete only with others with similar size talent pools and resources.
The classifications are 'A', 'AA', 'AAA', 'AAAA', and 'AAAAA'. They are popularly known as, respectively, '1A', '2A', '3A', '4A', and '5A'. The largest schools are classified as 5A, and the smallest are known as 1A.
Contrary to popular belief, a school is no longer permitted to request to be placed in a higher classification. The "play up" rule was all but eliminated due to an expanding number of schools that qualify for 5A competion. Schools can no longer request to "play up" for the sake of competition only. Only 2 exceptions will now allow a school to "play up". Geographic reasons that would create a travel hardship will allow a school to play in a higher classification. A second reason allows schools districts with multiple schools play together in the same league. For example, Dallas Carter (4A enrollment) is allowed to play in the 5A district that consists of other DISD schools.
Within each classification, the UIL separates the schools in regions, and then further separates the regions into districts for various contests. For example, in 5A there are four regions each with eight districts for a total of thirty-two districts with about six to nine schools in each district. Each type of contest will have different regions and competitors. (In 1A very small schools may choose to play six-man football or play 11-man football. Larger 1A schools, however, are not given this option.) The regions are decided behind closed doors by the UIL (in February of even-numbered years) and are an attempt to keep schools within a certain distance of their home town when attending competitions. Because of this centralized structure organized and mandated by the UIL, there are no leagues or conferences organized by the schools themselves, unlike the traditional structure in college athletics and high school athletics in many other states.
For purposes of the 5A football playoffs, four teams from each of the thirty-two 5A districts are eligible to be seeded for the playoffs. The two eligible teams with the highest student enrollment for its district are seeded in the Division I playoff bracket, and the remaining two teams (with the lower enrollment) are seeded in the Division II playoff bracket. This method is to prevent matchups between large schools and small schools although in practice this is not always the case. For example, in the 2006 playoffs, the Division I champion, (Southlake Carroll) had a lower student enrollment than the Division II champion (Cedar Hill).
Under the rule allowing Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas and Houston Strake Jesuit to compete, any private school that is eligible to join UIL must compete at the highest classification (currently AAAAA); the rule (purportedly) is designed to prevent private schools (which are not restricted by geographical enrollment boundaries) from "recruiting" players from other schools.
The state semi-final and championship games for all 5 classes in boys and girls basketball are held at the Frank Erwin Center. The state Track & Field meet is held at the Mike A Myers stadium, while the state swimming championships are held at the Lee and Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center. All the facilities listed above are located on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin. The state level academic competitions are also held on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin. Many other championship events are held in the Austin area as well. The soccer semi-finals and finals for 4A and 5A are held at Round Rock ISD Stadium, and the state baseball tournament is held at Dell Diamond in Round Rock. Historically, the football championship games have been held in mutually-agreed upon neutral sites, but in 2006 and 2007, both 5A state title games will be played at the Alamodome in San Antonio.

Events

Some of these events include:
Football, Basketball, Marching Band, Choir, Soccer, Debate, Literary Criticism, Journalism, One Act Play, Mathematics, Number Sense, Calculator Applications, Computer Science, Science, Current Events, and Social Studies

Miscellaneous

The UIL State Office has made an official ruling that the online encyclopedia site, Wikipedia, will not be accepted as proper documentation for oral interpretation contests due to its disclaimer: "Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here."

External links

★ University Interscholastic League