{"id":148237,"date":"2026-02-03T00:09:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T00:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/148237\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T00:09:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T00:09:25","slug":"uil-realignment-more-on-the-new-district-foes-for-lake-highlands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/148237\/","title":{"rendered":"UIL realignment: More on the new district foes for Lake Highlands"},"content":{"rendered":"

UIL officials released district realignments<\/a> this morning and Lake Highlands is scheduled to face new opponents<\/a> next season.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lake Highlands Wildcats raise the Bi-District Championship trophy after beating South Grand Prairie 43-36 in the first round of the 2025 playoffs. Courtesy of Mike Duhon Photography.<\/p>\n

From 2026 to 2028, Wildcat football and basketball, along with the other RISD schools (Richardson, Pearce and Berkner), will continue to compete in District 7-6A<\/a>. Lake Highlands volleyball will also stay in 7-6A through next season<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As for new foes, the Wildcats will begin playing Plano<\/a>, Plano East<\/a> and Plano West<\/a> rather than Irving<\/a>, Irving Nimitz<\/a> and Irving MacArthur<\/a>. In the realignment, the Irving ISD schools moved to District 8-6A.<\/p>\n

Another school leaving the fold is Jesuit<\/a>, which has played against Lake Highlands since 2020-2021. The Rangers will compete in District 6-6A moving forward.<\/p>\n

Replacing Jesuit as the eighth team in the district is Coppell<\/a>, which last played in the Wildcats\u2019 district from 2016 to 2018. Coppell basketball beat Lake Highlands, 72-67<\/a>, earlier this season and the football team knocked the Wildcats out of the second round of the playoffs<\/a> in 2024-2025.<\/p>\n

The new schools offer a large jump in enrollment from the Wildcats\u2019 previous opponents, thus creating a jump in competition. Out of Dallas-area programs, the Plano schools have the second, third and sixth highest enrollments and Coppell has the fourth<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jesuit and Irving ISD, however, lean toward the lower end of enrollment for 6A. MacArthur ranks 57th, Nimitz ranks 58th, Jesuit ranks 59th and Irving ranks 64th, the second-smallest enrollment in 6A.<\/p>\n

Now Lake Highlands, which has the 27th highest enrollment, will be punching upwards at schools with a larger student body. The Wildcats do have a higher enrollment than their RISD counterparts, totaling 2,932 students.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Realignment can be confusing, so the SportsDay desk at the Dallas Morning News put together an FAQ<\/a> for anyone curious about the process.<\/p>\n

With districts set, coaches will begin the scheduling process for the upcoming football season and soon, we\u2019ll know Lake Highlands\u2019 2026-2027 slate of games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UIL officials released district realignments this morning and Lake Highlands is scheduled to face new opponents next season.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[160,162,161],"class_list":["post-148237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plano","tag-plano","tag-plano-headlines","tag-plano-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}