From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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 do not qualify for membership in any other organization. Dallas Jesuit and Houston Strake Jesuit were the first, and thus far only, private schools to have been granted UIL membership 2003. This came after extensive court battles and negotiations from both the UIL's lawyers and Dallas Jesuit's and Strake Jesuit's joint lawyers. Previously, both Dallas Jesuit and Strake Jesuit were members of the defunct Texas Christian Interscholastic League (TCIL), but after that league's demise were refused entry into TAPPS because of competitive equity concerns.

Contents 1 Groupings 2 Events 3 Miscellaneous 4 External links

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. A school is permitted to request to be placed in a higher classification than its enrollment would otherwise dictate (but never in a smaller one, unless it believes there is an error in the figures used by UIL). This is done either for geographic reasons (there may not be another school nearby in the same classification) or for competition reasons (a school may be dominant in a particular sport, and thus wishes to compete with the larger schools in that sport). However, the school must then compete in the higher classification in all activities.

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 Dallas Jesuit and Houston Strake Jesuit to compete, any private school that is eligible to join UIL must compete at a classification one level higher than its enrollment would dictate; 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, both 5A state title games will be played at the Alamodome in San Antonio.

Further information: List of University Interscholastic League events

Some of these events include:

Football, Basketball, Marching Band, Soccer, Debate, Literary Criticism, Journalism, One Act Play, Mathematics, Number Sense, Calculator Applications, Computer Science, Science, Current Events, and Social Studies

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."

• University Interscholastic League