2016-2018 UIL Realignment

By Michael Wright
- Tweet
- Pin It
Updated: January 23, 2016

UIL Realignment Day is coming fast!

February 1st is considered a holiday for Texas high school football fans. That is the day that the University Interscholastic League (UIL) announces the district reclassification and realignment for 2016-2018. That is the day you find out if your team went up (or down) in classification. That is the day you find out if your rival is in your district again or whether coach will have to schedule them pre-district to keep it going. That is the day that pigskin prognosticators all over the state will start to make wild guesses about who is going to dominate and who is going to suffer from the new alignments.

This reclassification and realignment happens every 2 years to regroup schools according to their student population. This is also the time new schools are added in.

To determine which classification a team falls under, each school sent in their enrollment figures. Here is the breakdown of enrollment ranges from Class 1A to 6A for this realignment.

CUTOFF NUMBERS
6A 2150 and above
5A 1100 – 2149
4A DI 723 – 1099
4A DII 480 – 722
3A DI 319 – 479
3A DII 221 – 318
2A DI 158 – 220
2A DII 105 – 157
1A DI 59 – 104.9
1A DII 58 and below

Once every school is put in their classification, the UIL will group them into districts taking into consideration things like travel time. They also try to make each district an even number of schools. Many times the coaches will also lobby to go higher or lower in classification than their numbers assign them.

Once the districts are announced, the schedules can officially be created. Expect a flurry of games dates/times/locations to be negotiated just minutes after the announcements are made.

You can bet that Lone Star Gridiron is going to provide you with all the realignment news and repercussions.