If you are a meet director, click here. If you wish to enter students in the district meet, click here.
If you’re tired of clicking here, click here.
Fine. But despite the occasional glitch in the UIL’s academic spring meet entry system, and there have a been a few, the system offers a revolutionary change in how district meets are set up, how schools enter students, how points are scored, and how results are compiled and reported to the next level of competition. In addition to frustration now and then, it’ll produce invoices.
We knew we faced a steep learning curve in the first year of implementation. UIL Music Director Richard Floyd warned us, “there will be days when all you do is answer phone calls and e-mail, and you say to yourself, ‘Why are we doing this?’” Several years ago Floyd and the music department pioneered a similar system with its Texas State Solo-Ensemble Contest, which processes more than 20,000 entries.
But those days, Dick said, pass as the benefits of the system become apparent. And while we’ve fielded our share of phone calls and e-mails from confused and/or exasperated coaches, directors, administrators and their secretaries, we’ve taken as many from those who have found the system to be intuitive and user-friendly. Just think: with this system, a school will enter a student’s name, and that name need not be written again all the way through the State Meet.
So keep clicking, read directions carefully and bear with us as we climb over this latest technological hump. For more details, read Jana’s column.
State Meet Tentative Schedule
Check the 2004 Academic State Meet tentative schedule, posted on the UIL web-site. Big change: the four journalism contests have been moved from Friday, May 7 to Thursday, May 6.
Why?
• To reduce congestion in Thompson Conference Center on Friday.
• To centralize journalism contests and judging in the Joe C. Thompson Conference Center.
• To provide space Friday for the social studies contest, which must be held Friday since it conflicts with mathematics, editorial writing, prose/poetry and Lincoln-Douglas debate. The only alternate slot: no earlier than 1 p.m. Saturday, May 8. That means it would end around 3:30 p.m., and awards would take place around 5:30 p.m. Saturday.
For those worried about an extra night on the road and other additional expenditures, the first journalism contest — feature writing—won’t begin until 1 p.m., and the second — news — until 3 p.m. This will allow all schools except those in the farthest reaches of the state to arrive on Thursday. Besides, many school delegations arrive on Thursday anyway, given that several coaches’ conferences are conducted Thursday night and a number of contests begin at 8 a.m. Friday.
Added bonus: the Thursday wait at Red Lobster and Olive Garden won’t be as long as Friday either.
Schedule of Points Last fall, the UIL Legislative Council instructed the academic staff to study the Spring Meet Schedule of Points and return with a recommendation in June. Members of the committee have been appointed and flooded with questions at exactly the time of year that they have little or no time to answer them.
Among the questions they’re deliberating are:
• Why are points what they are?
• Why cap points?
• If point caps are removed, should points be awarded for first and second place teams?
• Should journalism & speech continue to receive team points?
• In team events, should all four members be allowed to place and have their points counted?
I’m sure committee members will debate other point-related questions as well, such as “Why do number sense winners get the same points as literary criticism since number sense is only a 10-minute contest and literary criticism is 90 minutes?”
At which time, someone throws a chair because points are a volatile issue, and I’ve yet to meet a student or coach who thinks his or her event receives too many points given the effort extended. More on this as it develops.
Meet the neighbors
By the time you read this, the biennial UIL reclassification and realignment will have been released. Congressional redistricting should be so simple.
Whether you’re delighted, distressed or determined to protest by packing off to Albuquerque or Lawton, just know that Charles Breithaupt and his staff face a thanklessly impossible task every other year. Imploding populations west of IH 35 and exploding populations east haven’t made the job any easier, especially for a five conference, four region structure into which to fit 1,300 or so schools, some as small as 20 students, K- 12, some bulging toward 5,000. The disparity creates special problems for academics, in particular Conference A schools. This spring, no 1A district has fewer than nine schools, several contain 12 or 13, and academics doesn’t have big-school, small-school divisions. Thus, a student’s chances of advancing to region are twice what they are in 2A or 3A.
Given general population trends and political, economic realities, is there a solution? I have no idea. Adding a sixth conference? It’s been rehashed ad nauseam. Besides, we’d be forced to scrape together four more regional meets as well as find time and space during the State Academic Meet schedule. Anyone for starting Academic State Meet on Tuesday or Wednesday?
In 5A, charter and magnet schools pose special problems as well. For example, District 10-5A contains 14 schools — seven of which are part of the Townview Magnet program. Not surprisingly, coaches complain and rightly so that they’re forced to compete against students from their own attendance zones, many of whom they trained as freshmen and sophomores.
Again, what to do? I floated a proposal that 10- 5A and similar districts be divided into zones: regular campuses and magnet campuses. Essentially, Region II, 5A would consist of nine districts rather than eight. It would impose on our regional hosts, but it’s doable, particularly since we’re reinstituting tiebreakers in all contests next year. Whether it happens, we’ll see.
Erminie C. Minard
The UIL lost one of its most ardent supporters with the passing of Erminie Minard, who died Jan. 25 at her residence in Surfside. Erminie coached number sense, calculator applications, math and science, sending students to region and state almost every year, including state champions in calculator applications and number sense.
Trained as a geologist — she was the first female geologist to be hired by Gulf Oil — she worked with the Danbury, Alvin, LaPorte and Fort Bend school districts. She served as district UIL academic coordinator, directed dozens of invitational and district academic meets, spoke at countless UIL conferences and workshops, recruited and motivated legends of coaches and students — elementary, junior high and high school alike — and, in general, served as one of the League’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders, occasionally from a wheelchair, for more than 25 years. For her tireless efforts, she was one of the first recipients of the UIL Sponsor Excellence Award.
Erminie lived and died on her own terms. She was an ardent Texas Longhorn and Dallas Cowboy fan. As her health deteriorated, she resisted going to the hospital for fear she’d miss the Super Bowl. She was an original, a grand old gal, and we’ll miss her.