Athletic director Callan Nokes sat in a meeting room at the Kelley Reeves Athletic Complex in Round Rock Feb. 2. A UIL representative handed him a packet containing all of the biannual UIL redistricting results.
Nokes said that he was shocked with what the packet contained. It was announced that the Chaps, along with their crosstown rivals Lake Travis, will be shipped from District 26 to District 25. The move takes away rivals like Austin High and Bowie, but gives them five new district opponents, all of them from Round Rock. The Chaps will play Round Rock, McNeil, Stony Point, Westwood and Cedar Ridge starting next year.
“With Hays adding another 6A school and Leander adding three 6A schools, we knew that something would change,” Nokes said. “We just didn’t know how much it would change, and they put us with Round Rock schools, who we have never been with before.”
While the immediate impact is in the regular season, it also significantly affects the playoffs. The Chaps have bounced around between 6A division one and division two for most sports in recent years, but that could change with the new district.
“We’re going to be third in enrollment in the new district, and it’s going to depend on two schools, Lake Travis and Round Rock,” Nokes said. “Every time they both make the playoffs, which I would predict would occur in many sports, we would be division two for sure.”
As of right now, the focus is on football, as reportedly hundreds of teams have declined the opportunity to play the Chaps in the nondistrict slate, according to Nokes. He also said that they were hoping to move into a larger district to cut down on the amount of nondistrict games, which didn’t happen.
“Finding four non-district games was quite the challenge,” assistant coach Baylor Mullins said. “Everyone from Waco to San Antonio and in between opted out of playing the Chaps. We were finally able to finalize the four pre-season games last week. It will be a couple of teams from the DFW area, a team from West Texas and possibly an out of state team, still working on a few details of which games will be at home this next year.”
The increased travel will have an effect on not only the teams, but also the budget.
“That’s going to be a little bit of an increase in our transportation budget,” Nokes said. “We’ll have to make that adjustment, so a few financial adjustments will have to be made.”
Nokes also discussed the possibility of a transportation system to bus students fans out to the longer-distance away games, stressing that it depended on the student demand for it.
Aside from the monetary effects of the decision, it will also affect the teams. Mullins said that the decision to play some long distance non-district games was not only necessary, but also strategic.
“To set up for travel throughout the year, we will have a couple of games early on in the season where we go on the road,” Mullins said. “This will help our kids get used to it, go through the routines so that it isn’t the first time they’ve had to do this later on in the year.”
As the release of the non-district schedule looms large, the Chaps continue to brace for change.
