HP to Play in Class 6A Next Season
Highland Park will play in the state’s largest classification for football and other sports beginning next season.
As part of the UIL’s biennial realignment process, HP will be elevated to the new Class 6A for two years starting in the fall of 2014, based on enrollment estimates and figures released by the UIL.
For the first time on Monday, the UIL released conference cutoff numbers in advance of realignment day, using snapshot enrollment numbers submitted by each public school in the state.
HPISD turned in an unofficial snapshot figure of 2,106 students, which is six students above the 6A cutoff line of 2,100. That will make HP one of the smallest 6A schools in the state for the next two years, if not the smallest outright.
The classification divisions, as well as new district alignments, will be made official on Feb. 3.
“We always thought it could be a possibility, based on previous realignments when we were close,” said HPISD athletic director Johnny Ringo. “With the growth in our enrollment, we knew that eventually we’d be 6A.”
It will be the first time HP has moved up in classification since taking a drop from 5A to 4A in the late 1980s. The school has been one of the largest 4A schools in the state for much of the past 25 years.
“The Scots are always competitive,” HPISD Superintendent Dawson Orr said in a statement. “We look forward to the challenge.”
Now it becomes likely that HP will face much larger schools from the Dallas area in district play. The four largest schools in the state, located in Plano and Allen, have more than 5,000 students.
“We realize the level of competition will obviously pick up,” Ringo said. “We’re fully prepared for it.”
Neighboring schools likely to move to 6A include Jesuit and Dallas ISD schools such as W.T. White, Sunset, and Skyline.
The new classification would also impact other sports such as basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball, golf, and track and field.
The changes will not affect tennis, soccer, swimming, and wrestling, each of which is reclassified separately by the UIL because of the smaller number of participating schools.
2,000 vs 5,000 students in the same class? That’s just stupid. So let me get this straight: They added a class and there is still that big of a discrepency? Genius.
The 2011-2012 UIL alignment numbers for 4A were 990-2064. Highland Park was in the top 10%. How do you think those schools that were twice as small felt about that? The running joke was that the cut-off for 4A was Highland Park enrollment +5. Here is a link to the actual numbers for all divisions in 2011-2012.
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/sports&id=7251101
Get ready for some Southlake football (and you thought Aledo was good?)
As the AD said, “Scots are always competitive”. And I’ll stand by my statement that 2K vs 5K is ridiculous.
As to Southlake, at least we don’t bastardize the process by keeping 1 high school football team with 2 high schools. I bet you Plano would be pretty good if they had kept one football team for 3 high schools…
I actually think there will be a benefit in the smaller sports like baseball and basketball – especially in the subvarsity teams. HP always had issues with depth of opponents teams – of them not having enough players/teams to allow us to have full seasons for a B team or a freshman team. This will be a chance for HP to have good competition top to bottom and perhaps a chance for more HP athletes to be a part of the programs!
What happened to 5A? 4A to 6A that is a pretty big jump. I looked at the link that SportsFan provided and it said that SouthLake was in 5A how could we be bigger than Southlake?
Good luck to the Scots if they play Allen or Southlake Carroll etc. in football next season. No more whipping up on the likes of Forney North next year.
Good observation, Silverlining. Many times Terrell couldn’t field a freshman team in some sports. The only caveat is if we get in a district with DISD schools. Then we may end up in the same situation.
Curious, the link was for the last realignment two years ago. Southlake will be 6A next year.
Curious,
This years 5A becomes 6A next year, 4A will be called 5A, etc. They are now calling 6 man 1A. So HP is just going up 1 class.
My point earlier is if your going to change the Classes, why not add a larger one? The difference between 2100 students and 5700 is enormous.
@Curious. “In the UIL’s reconfigured classes, the former 4A is now 5A and the old 5A is 6A, so Highland Park is not stepping up two classifications.” -Dallas Morning News