UIL Re-Alignment: Harvesters now in a five-team district

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University Interscholastic League (UIL) held their bi-annual re-alignment on Thursday where school districts discover their fate for competing with other school districts across the region.

For the last several years, football has been in a four-team district with Canyon, Dumas and Hereford. With the new high school in Canyon ISD, West Plains High School, numbers for Randall High School have shifted down. Lubbock-Estacado also saw a decrease in numbers, leading to speculation among sports pundits that Pampa’s District would become as much as a six-team district.

That’s not the case, however, as Pampa now belongs to a five-team district: Pampa, Canyon, Randall, Dumas and Hereford.

“There’s always tons of speculation on what they could do, who they could bring into the region or who your district is going to be,” Pampa ISD Athletic Director Cody Robinson said. “I don’t get wrapped up in that. I kind of thought it would be the same districtas last year plus Randall. It’s basically the same schedule as last year. The thing that is different is in our region we gained Estacado and Brownwood down there with Lake View, Big Spring and Andrews.”

Robinson said the exciting part was hearing how excited the students were to hear about their new District.

“We’ve been talking to our kids about the new District and region and yesterday I got tons of text messages from excited young men to see who we will be competing against next year,” Robinson said.

In football, the Harvesters open on the road at Big Spring, host Plainview, on the road to Caprock, host Decatur, at Perryton, home for Borger, at Hereford, home for Randall, at Dumas and home for Canyon.

“I really tried to focus on 4A and 5A schools,” Robinson said. “We’ve been scrimmaging Caprock and really needed to start playing those guys. Decatur was a scrimmage also, if we’re going to scrimmage them we might as well play them. We’re really focusing on getting better and get ready week-to-week for District play.”

For basketball, volleyball, softball and baseball, they were thrown into an eight-team district including Borger, Canyon, Randall, West Plains, Dumas, Hereford and Perryton.

“That’s competition right there,” Robinson said. “Every district game is a playoff game. You’ve got some really good, athletic programs, including ours, competing for four spots. That’s really exciting. It changes your atmosphere of a competition. You’ve got to handle your business and every week show up and get better. That’s the beauty of it.That’s exciting, as well.”

For more information or to look at the new alignments for all programs, visit www.uiltexas.org.