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DV picks up a top-notch transfer!!! 

He will either be able to play the entire season or would have to sit out the entire year. It will depend on if anyone marks on his Previous Athletic Participation Form (PAPF) that they think he transferred for athletic purposes. If someone does mark that, it would trigger a district executive committee meeting, where they could potentially rule that he is ineligible for transferring for athletic purposes. If that happens, he could then appeal to the UIL. But if no one marks anything on his PAPF, he should be able to play the entire season.

 

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

With a school like Jesuit competing in UIL, why is the organization separate from TAPPS?

Texas is one of 11 states in which private and public schools compete in different organizations.

 

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SportsDayHS writer and editor

6:00 AM on Aug 27, 2024 CDT

Jesuit takes the field before a District 7-6A high school football game against Lake... Jesuit takes the field before a District 7-6A high school football game against Lake Highlands at Ranger Stadium, Friday, Sept. 15, 2023, in Dallas.(Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer)
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In 2003, Jesuit and Houston Strake Jesuit became the only private schools to ever be allowed into the University Interscholastic League after years of resistance from public schools.

UIL officials acknowledged at the time that they were making the change in part because of a federal lawsuit filed by Jesuit and because they were worried that the lawsuit could result in a court order requiring even more private schools to be admitted.

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“I was the president of the THSCA when Jesuit and Strake Jesuit were allowed in,” said Joe Martin, now the executive director of the Texas High School Coaches Association. “We were concerned with that, because they are able to recruit their students, and not only are they able to recruit, they are able to select. Public schools don’t get to do either of those. That was the reason we felt like it was not fair.

“But they put a lot of parameters on those two private schools, and they compete in the highest level in 6A, and it has worked great.”

 
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Despite that, no other private schools have ever joined the UIL. And they haven’t even tried.

TAPPS executive director Bryan Bunselmeyer said he is not aware of any schools from his organization that have ever applied for UIL membership. He likes the fact that public and private schools don’t compete together, but Texas is one of the few states that keeps them separate.

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“I believe that our organization offers private and parochial schools an opportunity to compete against similar schools,” Bunselmeyer said. “I think our member schools compete well against schools of their own size and demographics.”

 

Nate Perry, manager of media relations for the National Federation of State High School Associations, said the NFHS believes Texas is among 11 states where public and private schools compete in different organizations. Another three states have them compete in the same organization but in different divisions or classes.

“The sentiment you hear from the public school side is that private schools have an unfair advantage, but it’s simply not true,” Parish Episcopal football coach Daniel Novakov said. “Take Parish, for instance. While we don’t have a geographic boundary, we do have an expensive tuition, a class size limitation and a stringent admission test to get in. Just different restrictions, but still prohibitive toward what people worry about, which is the ability to go out and recruit a football team without limits or government.

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Related:Parish Episcopal, coach Daniel Novakov working to sustain dominant TAPPS dynasty

“I think there is a lack of understanding and knowledge between both sides as to how each one actually works, and if they came together they would realize they are more similar than different. There’s a fear factor that is keeping both separate, and I believe it is without merit.”

In reality, Jesuit has the same attendance zone as W.T. White from Dallas Independent School District. If someone attends Jesuit or transfers there but lives outside of that zone, they have to sit out varsity athletics for one year unless they are coming from one of the three Catholic schools that are considered Jesuit’s feeder schools.

“I argued with [the UIL] for 10 years, saying we are not going to be able to recruit athletes because we have such high academic standards,” said Steve Koch, who was Jesuit’s athletic director for 30 years before retiring at the end of last school year. “Just because they can run a 40-yard sprint or they are 7 foot, that doesn’t get them in. How many top athletes in Texas or in Dallas are going to want to come where there are very strict academic standards, take more credits than public schools require, go to an all-boys school and have to follow a dress code and a discipline code?”

Jesuit only joined the UIL after it had no other options when the Texas Catholic Interscholastic League dissolved and TAPPS said it would never let the school into its private school league because of its size. Jesuit, an all-boys school, has won three UIL state titles — two in soccer and one in baseball — and it has to go by the same transfer rules as public schools and has never been found to have broken UIL rules.

  “Everyone thought we would just turn into this big powerhouse and recruit all the athletes in Texas,” Koch said. “They thought as soon as we got in, then every other private school would start coming in.”
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That hasn’t happened. One rule in particular has kept private schools from looking to leave TAPPS.

“The big kicker for private schools is the part-time coaches,” Koch said. “Most private schools have part-time coaches, and in the UIL that was not a negotiable rule. All of our UIL sport coaches at Jesuit had to be employees of the school.”

TCA-Addison boys basketball coach John Price has coached in Missouri, Alabama and Georgia, all of which have state associations that use the combined public/private model. He prefers that.

Price said it creates a more diverse competition pool for all classifications, it enhances the overall atmosphere of playoffs and state championships, it creates regional rivalries between schools that might never compete against each other, it increases media coverage and it increases revenue.

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“In years past, many public school coaches would point to ‘private school recruiting’ as a reason to segregate,” Price said. “But in the new transfer portal era of high school and college athletics, this is happening regardless of association identity, both with private school players transferring to public schools and vice versa.”

Posted

For the best high school football teams in America, such as Duncanville and DeSoto, lining up early season games has become like using a dating app. But it’s a third party who is swiping through potential out-of-state opponents for a head coach to choose from.

Thirteen Dallas-area UIL and TAPPS schools are playing out-of-state opponents in the first four weeks this season, including DeSoto, Anna, Melissa and First Baptist in their season openers this week. Prep Gridiron Logistics sets up interstate matchups all over the country and lined up back-to-back Class 6A Division II state champion DeSoto to host Georgia 5A state runner-up Creekside on Saturday and for Duncanville to host St. Frances (Md.) in a battle of nationally ranked teams Sept. 14.

 “I’m like Match.com for high school football. I put together hundreds of games each year,” said Joe Maimone, owner and operator of Prep Gridiron Logistics, a New Jersey-based company. “[Coaches] say I have this date open, this is the travel stipend, and I put it in a database and hit one button and then that opportunity goes out to over 400 high school football coaches around America.”

It doesn’t take long to find a match.

“What used to take weeks or months to do now takes hours and days with our technology,” Maimone said. “I wait a week for the inquiries to start coming back to me, see who is interested and then create a list and send that to the head coach. He approves which one, two or three he wants to pursue.”

A rising number of Dallas-area teams are playing out-of-state opponents, and many are out of necessity because no one will play them. That doesn’t sit well with the Texas High School Coaches Association.

“I don’t think you have to go outside of Texas to have competition, no matter who you are, but some of our schools and coaches refuse to play, so they get in a bind,” said Joe Martin, executive director of the THSCA. “I wish they didn’t have to do it and I wish they wouldn’t do it. I think the majority of the coaches in our state understand what our association’s stance is and that we would just like to promote playing each other and keeping Texas high school football as pure and as fresh as it can be.”

The THSCA is particularly opposed to its schools playing out-of-state private schools, Martin said, because it worries that Texas athletes will be recruited by their opponents.

Allen, DeSoto and Duncanville — schools that have combined to win 11 state titles — have played out-of-state teams frequently in recent years. Allen is 5-1 in those games since 2014, DeSoto is 8-2 since 2010, and Duncanville has gone 4-2 while playing an out-of-state team each of the last six seasons.

Last year, Duncanville went without a scrimmage because no one wanted to face a team that was No. 8 in the MaxPreps preseason national rankings. This year, coming off back-to-back 6A Division I state titles and ranked No. 7 nationally, Duncanville doesn’t have a Week 1 game.

“We couldn’t get a game,” Duncanville coach Reginald Samples said in July at the THSCA’s convention and coaching school. “Right now, I actually feel better this year. Last year, we didn’t have a scrimmage and we played the first game and then we didn’t have a second game. This year, we actually got a scrimmage, but we don’t have a Week 1, so we have St. Frances [from Maryland] as a Week 3 and we play South Oak Cliff Week 2.”

Anna is 35-5 in three seasons with Seth Parr as coach, it won the 4A Division I state title last year, and as it moves up to 5A this season, it suddenly struggles to find nondistrict opponents. Fort Worth Southwest dropped Anna from its 2024 schedule in May after two other schools backed out of facing Anna in 2023.

Unable to find a Texas school that wanted to play Week 1, Parr turned to Brian Hercules, a third party who sets up out-of-state matchups for Texas schools, including home games this season for Fort Worth All Saints against opponents from Missouri and California. Going off parameters provided by Parr, Hercules came up with a home date Friday for Anna against Oakland (Tenn.), which won Tennessee state titles in three of the last four years and was a state runner-up last season.

“I didn’t want a private school, I didn’t want IMG [in Florida] or anything like that,” Parr said. “I wanted a public school with some success, but the same amount of enrollment. It was kind of like matching us on a dating app, and they swiped right and they must have liked us.”

Melissa also ended up with a heavyweight opponent this week and will host back-to-back Arkansas 5A state champion Little Rock Parkview on Saturday in the Wipe Out Kids’ Cancer Classic. Melissa coach Matt Nally thinks matchups like these will become more commonplace for Texas schools, and he took on a game against an out-of-state team for the first time because it’s a chance to raise money for a good cause.

Coaches said that scouting an out-of-state opponent can be difficult beyond what information is available online and that the quality of game film that is exchanged isn’t always equal. In DeSoto’s case, it hasn’t played a regular-season game yet while Creekside has, and that caused problems because DeSoto coach Claude Mathis doesn’t exchange scrimmage film.

Rockwall-Heath had an area team back out of a Week 3 game, and the closest potential replacement that coach Rodney Webb could find in Texas was Del Rio, about seven hours away. So he instead used a third party to set up a game against defending Georgia 3A state champion Cedar Grove on Sept. 13, and like nine of the other 13 D-FW schools playing interstate games, Rockwall-Heath will be playing at home.

“The cost for us is just providing travel for the team to come in, and they are actually traveling here by bus. We are buying them a postgame meal, and I think we foot the bill for the hotel as well. We keep all of the gates,” Webb said. “Financially it’s not a bad deal when your alternative is to play somebody in Texas on the other side of the state and play a neutral-site game that is going to have a very low gate and it’s costing a lot to get all of your people there.”

Melissa’s game against Parkview was put together by Kris Cumnock, who has experience with out-of-state matchups after bringing in 13-time Alabama state champion Hoover and national powerhouse St. John Bosco from California to play at five-time state champion Allen and its $59.6 million home stadium in the Tom Landry Classic in 2016 and 2022, respectively. He sees more matchups like that on the horizon.

 “There are a lot of coaches out there that don’t want to play somebody really tough in Week 1, so you wind up with Duncanville with no game and DeSoto and Melissa having to go out of state,” Cumnock said. “I don’t see it getting better. But teams are willing to come to Texas to play because that’s all they have heard about is Friday night lights in Texas.”

Texas vs. the Nation

A look at matchups this season involving Dallas-area UIL and TAPPS teams and out-of-state opponents the first four weeks of the season.

WEEK 1

Buckeye Union (Ariz.) at First Baptist, 7 p.m. Friday

Oakland (Tenn.) at Anna, 7:30 p.m. Friday

Creekside (Ga.) at DeSoto, 5 p.m. Saturday

Little Rock Parkview (Ark.) at Melissa, 7:30 p.m. Saturday

WEEK 2

Jesuit at Jesuit New Orleans (La.), 6 p.m. Sept. 6

Hillcrest at Elgin (Okla.), 7:30 p.m. Sept. 6

Kimball at Pine Bluff (Ark.), 11 a.m. Sept. 7

WEEK 3

Lift for Life (Mo.) at Fort Worth All Saints, 7 p.m. Sept. 12

Cedar Grove (Ga.) at Rockwall-Heath, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 13 at Wilkerson-Sanders Stadium

Little Rock Catholic (Ark.) at Fort Worth Nolan, 1:30 p.m. Sept. 14

Bishop McGuinness (Okla.) at Bishop Lynch, 4:30 p.m. Sept. 14

St. Frances (Md.) at Duncanville, 7 p.m. Sept. 14

WEEK 4

Cherry Creek (Colo.) at Highland Park, 7 p.m. Sept. 20

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