By JOSHUA McKINNEY
Staff Writer
Realignment held no surprises for the Metro-area schools in Classes 6A and 4A.
With Monday’s release of the UIL’s new districts for football and basketball for the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons, Hanna, Rivera and Los Fresnos remained in 32-6A and Port Isabel will continue to play in 16-4A DII for football and 32-4A for basketball.
District 32-6A loses Lopez and Brownsville Veterans Memorial for the next two seasons but adds Weslaco High and Weslaco East.
This puts five playoff teams from 2015 in the same district, which means 32-6A is shaping up to be one of the Rio Grande Valley’s toughest districts for the next two seasons.
“It’s going to be an interesting one,” Rivera coach Tom Chavez said. “We have a couple of schools coming in our district with Weslaco and Weslaco East. They’re very good football teams, and along with San Benito, Los Fresnos, Harlingen and Harlingen South it should be exciting. We’ve got two Brownsville schools with Hanna and ourselves in a district with these power. You’ve got to play good teams to be in the playoffs, so I’ll be looking forward to that. It will help us in the long run.
“If we get the chance to be in the playoffs or anybody in our district gets in the playoffs, it’s going to be a group of guys going farther in the playoffs.”
Newcomers Weslaco High and Weslaco East each advanced to the area round of the playoffs last season, and San Benito and Harlingen High went as far as the regional semifinal round. Los Fresnos lost to Weslaco High in the bi-district round of the playoffs, 49-28.
Medrano thinks going against playoff-caliber opponents on a weekly basis will provide for plenty of quality football this fall.
“It’s going to be a tough district, no doubt,” he said. “Without a doubt, I think it’s going to be one of the toughest districts in South Texas, 32-6A. It’s going to be week in, week out. There’s going to be tremendous ball games.”
Weslaco High’s move to 32-6A means coach Tony Villarreal gets to play Brownsville teams in district again. Villarreal went to Hanna in the mid-70s along with Medrano, and coached the Golden Eagles from 1998-2004.
Medrano said Villarreal has a long history of coaching in the area, and coaching well.
“I’ve faced him a lot of times,” Medrano said. “When he was at Pace, he was in our district. I’ve played Tony Villarreal and scrimmaged him for many years.”
Swapping two Brownsville schools for Weslaco High and Weslaco East means the Brownsville schools will face one or two more games away from Sams Memorial Stadium.
“It’s always good to play at home,” Chavez said. “That’s what we always want to do. We just go with the numbers that we get in this meeting and figure out who’s the home school and who’s the visiting school right now, and who we’re playing. It’s all good to go. All we have to do is finish our offseason and see if we can keep up with these boys.”
District 16-4A DII remains the same for Port Isabel. The Tarpons are set to compete in a district with Corpus Christi West Oso, Orange Grove, Progreso, Raymondville and Rio Hondo.
Monty Stumbaugh, Port Isabel’s longtime coach, figured his team’s district wouldn’t change, due to the limited amount of 4A teams in South Texas.
“It’s two long trips for us,” Stumbaugh said. “One to Corpus and one to Orange Grove. Those are both three-hour trips, so it’s pretty good (bit of) traveling. But it’s about the same. It is what it is I guess. It’s no big deal really.
“It’s a tough district, and that’s about all they can do because that’s all the 4A Division II schools there are,” he added. We’re pretty much tied into that because the district above us lost two but moved them out and picked up (two more). We ended up having two six-team districts, so it worked out fine.”
Port Isabel turned in an enrollment figure of 656, which put the school on the smaller side of Class 4A. That put Port Isabel in 4A DII again, after the school was placed in the division during the first realignment under this two-division system.
Class 4A’s cutoff numbers were 480-1,099. Schools with reported enrollments between 480-722 were set in Division II districts. Under the previous guidelines, teams in the class were lumped together, which put smaller schools at a disadvantage.
“I was on a committee several years ago for three years when they tried to do all of this,” Stumbaugh said. “I don’t think they’re going to change it. I really don’t, because it puts teams (in districts) more towards enrollment. You got people with 490 kids playing people with a 1,000. That’s a little tough. They’ve got more to choose from, so now you’re with more of your enrollment types. It makes it a little more balanced.”
Joshua McKinney covers sports for The Brownsville Herald. You can reach him at (956) 982-6663 or via email at [email protected]. On Twitter, he’s @joshuabvherald.