In a little more than a year coaches around the state of Texas will be anxiously awaiting their fate for the next two seasons as the UIL’s biennial realignment and reclassification will take place in early February 2024. UIL Realignment places teams into new classifications and districts for the next two years and lays the blueprint for the coming Texas High School Football seasons.

What are the next steps leading up to realignment and what are some potential headlines that we are looking forward prior to this monumental day?

Snapshot Day

The first big milestone leading up to realignment will be what is commonly known as “Snapshot Day.” This is the day schools turn in their Average Daily Membership (ADM) or enrollment to the UIL, typically this is the last Friday of October. This is where the UIL will really begin to determine where those classification and division cut-offs will wind up, typically you can start from Class 6A and work your way down. What we typically learn before anything else is which schools saw fast growth and will almost certainly move up a classification, while we start to begin piecing together who could be schools straddling the classification line. We saw several fast growth schools last alignment with schools like North Forney, Prosper Rock Hill and Royse City in the DFW area jumping from 5A-Division II all the way to Class 6A.  Some potential fast growth schools in 2024 to keep an eye on are Fulshear, Iowa Colony, Anna, San Antonio Davenport and Canyon West Plains. Some possible schools straddling classification borderlines in 2024 will be Highland Park, Lubbock Cooper, College Station, Franklin and Gunter.

Classification Cut-Offs Released

Typically, after Thanksgiving, the UIL will then release their classification and division splits, these numbers will give the schools their classification and division for 2024-2025. (The division splits apply only to 5A-1A schools). By releasing this information early it allows schools to get a jump start on non-district scheduling, etc. A minimum of 220 schools will be placed in Class 6A, with a maximum of 250 schools, not including schools that opt up to Class 6A. After that point the UIL tries to place a minimum of 200 schools in each other classification, while also trying their best to maintain as close to a 2:1 ratio from largest school to smallest school in a class. Typically, Class 5A will consist of 250 schools, much like 6A, while the other classes are all closer to 200.

Opt-Ups

One wild card that is hard to predict is schools who opt up to higher classifications and/or divisions, typically this involves schools in one of two scenarios. The first involves schools in mult-school ISD’s being opted up to keep their schools together. This has been an issue in Class 5A-Division I in recent years, primarily for schools in South Texas in the San Antonio area, Victoria and Corpus Christi ISD’s. These opt-ups can often skew the division splits and cause schools who most believe would be Division I to fall into Division II. There are opt ups occasionally for travel purposes, what was interesting last alignment is there were several schools in the El Paso area who chose not to opt up after they had typically opted up from Division II to Division I in Class 4A. Clint, Clint Mountain View and Fabens are the schools who did not opt-up this past realignment. Was this a two-year experiment or will those schools choose to opt up again in 2024?

New Schools

As always there will be several new schools added to the mix and also one notable district going through a consolidation that will make things interesting. Here are a few of the schools that we know are joining UIL football in 2024 and what we believe their classification will be.

Prosper Walnut Grove (5A-Division II)

New Caney West Fork (5A-Division I)

Eagle Mountain (4A-Division I)

Lubbock-Cooper Liberty (4A-Division II)

Fort Bend Crawford (6A)

There could be more schools added with some new charters opening etc and we will monitor for any movement.

There are also big happenings in Wichita Falls ISD where school consolidation is coming, the district is closing their three high schools Rider, Hirschi and Wichita Falls High and opening two brand new schools in Wichita Falls Memorial and Wichita Falls Legacy. Both schools project to be 5A-Division II schools in this coming alignment.

Is Class 7A Coming?

Coaching school in 2021 was the first time UIL leadership publicly mentioned the possibility of a Class 7A coming to Texas maybe as soon as the 2024 realignment. It doesn’t appear there is as much new school growth in this alignment as there was in 2020 or 2022, so the early smart money is that the 2024 UIL Realignment won’t include a Class 7A.

Realignment Day

While we don’t know the exact date of the 2024 UIL Realignment announcement, you can make a safe bet the UIL Realignment announcement will take place in the first week of February 2024 at 9 a.m. central time.