Thoughts on the upcoming realignment

We will find out Monday if the Hawk football team will stay somewhat close to home, or once again go west for the next two seasons.

The Texas UIL will release reclassification and realignment information on Monday for football, basketball and volleyball.

Basketball and volleyball will likely stay the same for Iowa Park, as both sports feature only one division per classification.

But in football, Class 4A is broken down into two divisions. Iowa Park has for the past number of years been one of the smallest (enrollment) schools in 4A.

Just recently, the UIL released reclassification numbers for the state. There were several around here (including myself) that hoped we would drop to 3A Division I.

We just missed the cutoff.

One statewide prediction website (texasredzonereport) seems to think that Iowa Park, Vernon, Graham and Bridgeport will be joined by new members Mineral Wells, Glen Rose, and Godley.

The Rams drop down from Division I for the next two years after reporting 805.5 high school enrollment.

I’m still trying to figure how you end up with one-half of a student. Mineral Wells isn’t the only school to report a .5 in their figures. Perryton, Robstown, and Seminole are a few of the others.

They further predict that Krum and Aubrey will join District 4-4A DII members Sanger, Celina, Van Alys-tyne, Farmersville, and Nevada Community.

I wouldn’t mind that makeup too much, although the trip to Glen Rose is a bit further than we’ve gone in four years for a conference game.

There have been other rumblings that we could head west once again, like we did five years ago.

That district might include Perryton, Borger, Lubbock Estacado, Seminole, and Levelland.

But maybe that’s enough teams for District 2-4A DII, and we are ok.

We’ll see. Weirder things have come from the UIL.

I’ll have a complete story in next week’s issue of the Leader, including comments from those in the know.

Until then, rest assured Iowa Park will continue to thrive across the sports in the various high school sports, despite playing opponents that have twice the enrollment we do (in everything but football). In football, some of the Division II members are just almost twice our size.