I e-mailed David Trussel (about the one school, one team aspect for FTC) and his answer was basically what was said previously. This is a pilot and all aspects of the rules, competition, etc. will be reviewed after this year.
Not really an formal answer but he got back to me in less than 24 hours and recognized my concerns. While, this doesn’t mean that anything will be done in the future to address my concern, at least it shows me that UIL is trying to listen.
This is not completely correct. Central Catholic here in San Antonio is an UIL school.
5986 hopes to get an invite. That being said, I can see where this is a double edged sword. Although the rookie team I am running now is not excluded, I am also a home-schooling parent, a scout leader, and a mentor from a prior team that this will exclude.
There are already some serious additional challenges that a non-school based team has to overcome. Widening that gap is not the way to go.
In the future I hope that the UIL rules/competition will stay the same as FRC’s. It is already hard enough to sustain an FRC program as it is without dividing the resources to meet multiple goals.
Can you provide your conference and district? Looking at the posted UIL Academic Alignments (here: https://www.uiltexas.org/academics/alignments) doesn’t show SA Central Catholic as a UIL school.
This document comprises an alphabetical list of all UIL member schools and their division alignments. I did not see Central Catholic when I looked, but it may be under a different name if it is there.
This document from the TAPPS website also lists Central Catholic as a TAPPS school.
I wouldn’t use the word “exclusionary”. It makes it sound like the UIL teams are doing something intentional. This is simply the beginnings of a merger of two organizations whose prior structures are not 100% compatible. I know in our district many policies, insurance and otherwise, are written with references to the UIL guidelines. It was easier since UIL is the predominant vehicle for all organized club and sports competitions. The school itself has no choice and the district had no malice. There may be some pre-existing public versus private school exclusion issues, too big a topic to debate on CD, but I do not think individual schools are being intentionally “exclusionary”.
Whoa, cool to see us so high up!