Private high schools competing with public schools?

M

MeSlayer

Veteran XV
Just wondering what you guys opinions on Private Schools competing with public schools in sports. I'm fairly sure that most of you would have some strong opinions about it (esp if you live in Louisiana heh), but my bro sent this in the news and it looks like Dallas Jesuit and Houston Strake Jesuit (private schools) are now allowed to compete in the UIL (league of public school competetion)

Personally, graduating from Dallas Jesuit, I think its a hell of a good thing. With the downfall of the TCIL (the texas catholic school sports league) about 3-4 years ago, most of those schools went to the private school league, TAPPS - However dallas jesuit and houston strake were too big to be let in. So they ended up having to go to (for football anyways) san antonio, el paso, hell they even played some college team from mexico (no joke), just so they could find some warm bodies to play. No championship, every game for pride. And I thought that sucked, and was wrong.

So now those two private schools (due to their 'independent' situation) get to play with the big boys of texas high school football, albeit with a few laughable restrictions (I thought they could have done better)
1) Each private school gets a district, just like a public school, to get their players from
2) If they have a player from outside of that district, he loses one year of varsity eligilibity, meaning that no freshmen on the varsity squad if hes non-district. ono!

Just kinda curious on what you guys, from states that have this system in place, think.
 
-text from article-
UIL to Jesuit: You can suit up
Organization approves letting 2 private schools compete at 5A level; state OK still needed

01/14/2003

By RACHEL COHEN / The Dallas Morning News

Two private high schools could participate in the University Interscholastic League this fall after the organization's Legislative Council voted Monday to amend its bylaws.

Dallas' Jesuit and Houston's Strake Jesuit would become the only nonpublic schools in the league, which governs competition in athletics and other activities. The rule change, which still must receive final approval from the state's commissioner of education, would end more than two years of legal wrangling.

Only schools that do not qualify for other leagues can apply for UIL membership under the proposed rule. The Jesuit schools are the only two in the state that meet that criterion, according to the UIL. Both have competed as independents since the Texas Christian Interscholastic League folded after the 1999-2000 school year.

The schools would compete in Class 5A, the UIL's largest classification, and would not join a district for football until the 2004-05 school year.

"I'm delighted at their openness and friendliness," said the Rev. Philip Postell, Jesuit's president. "This was very significant in the history of the state of Texas and could not have been done without some pretty big open minds."

UIL director Bill Farney said he expected that many of the league's public members would not like the rule change.

"I can tell you that of the 21 people who voted, all 21 would rather not do it, but we thought it was better to do it on our terms and do it with people who are honorable like the Jesuits," said Legislative Council chairman Don Hendrix, superintendent of Crosby Independent School District.

Dr. Hendrix acknowledged that the ongoing legal developments influenced the council.

Jesuit, an all-boys Catholic school in North Dallas, filed a lawsuit in federal court in November 2000 requesting admission to the UIL. The case was dismissed in January 2002 by a U.S. district judge. The school appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard arguments in June but has not yet ruled.

Dr. Hendrix said that the delay suggested that the court might not uphold the dismissal.

Bills also have been filed in the state Legislature that would allow private schools in the UIL. Previous such attempts have failed, but the November election sent more potential supporters of the bills to the legislature, Dr. Hendrix said.

Dr. Farney said he expected that the commissioner of education, Felipe Alanis, would approve the rule change and that new district alignments for the 2003-04 school year would be announced in early March. The schools will have to wait a year to compete in UIL football. League rules prohibit new members from joining a football district in the middle of a two-year alignment cycle.

Neither side expected a hang-up in the Jesuit schools' applications, and both sides expected the lawsuit to be resolved if Jesuit is admitted.

Maryland and Virginia are the only other states in which public and private schools compete in separate leagues. In some states where they compete together, public school officials have complained that private schools enjoy an unfair advantage and build powerhouses by recruiting elite athletes.

Those issues also concern Texas public school officials, who point out that private schools lack attendance zones and can select students.

The Jesuit schools will have to abide by existing UIL rules, which prohibit recruiting and transfers for athletic purposes.

Dr. Farney said that the UIL would assign an attendance zone to each private school based on which public school's boundaries it is located in. Jesuit would have the same attendance zone as W.T. White under that arrangement.

Students who do not live in the attendance zone would be ineligible for varsity athletics in their first year at the school. They could compete in sub-varsity athletics that year.

Dr. Farney acknowledged that this rule would have little effect on the quality of the Jesuit schools' varsity teams. Most students enter those schools as ninth-graders, and few freshmen participate in varsity athletics.

Requiring the Jesuit schools to compete as small 5A programs will help offset any competitive advantages, Dr. Farney said.

Without the 5A requirement, Jesuit, with nearly 1,000 boys, would sit on the bubble between 4A and 5A. Strake, with a smaller enrollment, would probably be a 4A school.

Dr. Farney speculated that it would make sense to place the schools in a district that has an odd number of teams. Locally, two districts have seven members: 10-5A, which consists of Dallas ISD schools, and 4-5A, whose members span DeSoto to Weatherford.

UIL rules that require coaches to be school employees won't hinder Jesuit, Father Postell said. Private schools often use nonemployees as coaches, but he said that Jesuit has been preparing for potential admission to the UIL by moving toward an all-employee coaching staff.

UIL officials stressed that Monday's decision does not let in all private schools, just two with good reputations that had no other options. Without a league, the Jesuit schools had difficulty filling their schedules and could not compete for postseason championships.

"They have a history of not being renegades," Dr. Hendrix said.

The new rules make it difficult for other private schools to join the UIL. And Dr. Hendrix and Father Postell said they sense little interest from other private schools to join the league.

E-mail rcohen@dallasnews.com


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Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/latestnews/stories/011403dnspojesuit.1ce895a5.html
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A lot of people around here are freaking out

Look at louisiana, they have what i think 5a, 4a, and 3a football flat out dominated by private schools, because they can recruit kids, whereas public schools have really nothing to offer except a better program.

They also generally have a lot more money to spend on facilities, coaching, etc.


And as to who cares, i'm not asking you to care im asking for opinions :eek:
 
:shrug:
I swam competitively in high school. There was a private school just down the road a few miles, an all boys catholic school. The couple times we had a meet against them, they fucked us up pretty bad. We got our asses kicked, but we didn't bitch about it, we just knew that they were better than us.
 
:lol: MeS, prepared to start getting trounced by DeSoto and Duncanville and Arlington and shit. We have all the thugs from the ghetto on our teams, thats why its always down to us and them for the 5A state championchip.
 
honestly i dont know

youll either have rich boys getting their fuck smashed or they will end up recruiting and get those ghetto thugs cuz dey momma told em to get edumacated. so they can go to college and declare for the draft after their soph year.

its weird ya know.
 
am i the only one here who doesn't give a flying fuck

no offense to your thread or anything, but it just doesn't seem like there's much to debate on a (gay)topic like this
 
I'm pretty sure here in Montana they have public/private school competition. There just aren't enough private schools here to have their own league.
 
This is news? We've (Indiana) have had private schools competing with public for almost as I can remember. Catholic school, private schools, they all compete together with public schools.
 
the thing is that private schools that are 5A or 4A size suck ass academically. one of the main appeals of private schools is the smaller class sizes.

here in atlanta, westminster is AAA (and GA has a "private school kids count 1.5x" rule) and they are still probably the best private school around. they do ok in football (as does Lovett, also AAA), but they dont win the championship or anything. theyre happy to make top4.

GAC is really good athletically, i think, but who wants to go there? Its in the middle of nowhere and sucks academically.

For that reason, public schools still do fine athletically.

Also, it should be noted:

As explained, its ends up that in order to maintain academic appeal a school can't overboard on athletic recruiting. Still, when there is a SUPERSTAR athlete, he *will* often end up at a private school, as schools can afford to recruit an athlete here and there. However, the public schools have a bigger pool of people (private schools mainly have to accept the smarter kids) and thus have better, deeper (and more consistent) overall programs.
 
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They let private schools play with public schools here in Wisconsin, and it sucks because the private schools (like Marquette, Pius XI and Catholic Memorial) recruit players, so they are always in the state tournmaents of most sports and they win a good share of them every year.
 
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