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UIL announces a late start for grades 6A and 5A for the 2020 high school football season in Texas

The University Interscholastic League made a monumental and rather uneasy announcement on Tuesday, delaying the start of all fall activities for the state’s two largest classifications, including Texas high school football, by five weeks. The announcement does not change the schedule for the smaller classifications.

For classes 6A and 5A, the UIL has postponed the start of training, which is scheduled to start on August 3, to September 7. The first week of high school football games in Texas now takes place from September 24th to 26th, four weeks later than the original August 27-29 start date.

This move has a significant impact on all extracurricular activities in the state of Texas, particularly soccer. The playoffs for the two largest classifications, which were originally scheduled to start on November 12, now begin on Thursday, December 3. The UIL championship games were scheduled for December 16-19 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington. You are now moving to a TBD date in January.

However, classes 4A, 3A, 2A and 1A remain unaffected and are scheduled to continue – training begins on August 3, games begin on August 27 and 29, playoffs begin on November 12 and the state championships remain in the middle planned by the end of December.

It’s an amazing UIL announcement that usually insists on treating all classifications equally.

Another placeholder in this scenario: The UIL must navigate through local entities that restrict things more strictly. For example: Hidalgo County (down in the Rio Grande Valley) and Houston ISD have mandated that personal learning begin much later than the start of Labor Day implemented by the UIL. In these two areas, extra-curricular activities (including sports) can only begin when personal learning begins. Will these schools have an even shorter season (or possibly no season) or will the school districts try to relax these rules for practicing during the virtual learning sessions?

Looking at the athletics calendar as a whole, this step of the UIL to postpone the start of the season may be the last step available to ensure that a football season is played this school year. There may not be another chance to delay the season any further. However, due to the size of our state and the different conditions in the individual regions, there is a possibility that some school districts will not be able to set up soccer teams this year if the season progresses with the newly planned start on September 7th. The local health situation shows no improvement.

The situation remains fluid and TexasFootball.com will continue to follow the story.

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