A UIL committee decided in a meeting this week to place the Alto ISD high school football program on a two-year postseason suspension. The suspension will also make any Alto ISD football player ineligible for any UIL or UIL-sponsored awards and honors. (It will not make them ineligible for any of our awards or rankings)
The issue is that the Alto ISD had an administrative error in the reporting of their enrollment by three students. The reported enrollment placed Alto ISD in 2A Division II. However, with the actual enrollment number, being just three students fewer, they should have been placed in 2A Division I.
Alto ISD is not being accused of any intentional wrongdoing. The issue is that they reported their official number of enrolled students, per their policies. However, there were three students that had begun attending school in late October but were not counted as official enrollees until the first of the next month, less than two weeks later. Therefore, the enrollment number was inaccurate for 12 days.
The decision has brought outcry by the Alto IDS football community, and even some of their football rivals, that feel that the players should not be punished for what is by all accounts an honest administrative error. From the UIL perspective, they have to draw enrollment number lines somewhere as a measure of creating competitive balance. It is too close to the start of the football season to rearrange any schedules. However, the question remains, should the error lead to a postseason suspension of two years? Let us know below:
