By Bobby Hawthorne
Director of Academics

Question: I am getting ready to hold my district meeting for academic UIL. I need to clarify one of the rule changes to make sure that I understand correctly. Forcing or pressuring a student to participate in a non-qualifying event that causes them to miss a qualifying event is a violation of the Spring Meet Code. Thus a student cannot be forced to miss a UIL Regional competition in order to compete in a FFA Livestock contest but could be forced to miss the UIL Regional competition in order to compete in a district baseball game. Is this correct?

Answer: FFA is not a UIL competition so it would not apply. Forcing a student to miss the district meet in order to compete in an invitational track meet would. Pressuring a student to miss UIL regional to compete in a district baseball game would not apply either. The student would have to choose. If the game were non-district, it would apply.

The spring is a busy season, and baseball coaches have every right to expect that their players will be available for district games. If two district activities conflict - whether they’re feature writing and golf, TSSEC and tennis, or baseball and one-act play - students will have to choose. Hopefully, coaches, directors and administrators can juggle schedules to avoid these conflicts.

When this isn’t possible, the Spring Meet Code recognizes that district, region and state contests are more important than invitational or optional competitions, and the rule exists to eliminate the unnecessary pressures that students occasionally face.

Question: How stringently should the conflict pattern be applied at the district meet? I am specifically interested in how this relates to students who participate in Number Sense and wish to compete in events that have the same starting time but a much different length. Also I have Prose and Poetry students who wish to compete in Ready Writing. These students agree to read first in their rooms, enter the other contest late and abide by the time constraints of the contests already underway.

If these students should advance in both contests, could you please tell us how it would be handled at the Region and State levels? Would they be able to compete in conflicting events or would they need to choose one or the other event?

Answer: If students advance in contests that conflict, they will have to choose. Conflicts won’t be broken at regional and state.

It is not possible to do prose/poetry and ready writing. If they win at district, they will be unable to compete in both at region. Ready writing is a two-hour contest and will run concurrently with prose/poetry at region.

Also, if you allow your students to compete in both, then other schools in the district will want to do so as well. Whose students will be allowed to go first?

Districts must not conflict Number Sense and Calculator Applications. It is possible to accommodate Number Sense (8-8:30), calculator applications (9-9:30) and computer applications (set-up 9-10, contest 10-11) at district, and I would have no objections to such a schedule if your district meet can accommodate it, but this may create problems at region.

Question: May a student who is ineligible by no pass, no play attend a student activities conference?

Answer: Yes. A student activities conference is an educational trip, not an extracurricular activity. It’s not competitive. It’s not open to the general public. There’s no admission charge.

Question: Our district voted not to include One-act play points toward our district sweepstakes. Is this legal?

Answer: No. You can’t vote to omit pole vaulting points toward the district track and field championship either.