UIL rethinking plans

The UIL has spent a lot of time in front of judges and in courtrooms over the years, and unless they back off the latest decision involving state track meet qualifiers in wake of the swine flu pandemic, there's going to be a lawsuit filed by some angry parent as fast as you can say injunction.

But the good news is the UIL looks to be trying for a better solution.

As it is now, the UIL has stopped all athletic and academic competitions until May 11. The one sport most affected is track since regional meets were scheduled for this weekend. UIL director Charles Breithaupt, in light of this, said qualifiers to the state meet would be determined by the top four times in each region based on performances at the respective district meets.

This has opened up a whole can of worms as my previous blog entailed. And this is an injunction on the state meet just waiting to be filed. But Breithaupt told the Dallas Morning News that a Plan B could be forthcoming.

"We can do something that will be more palatable to the schools than what we initially released," Breithaupt told the newspaper. "Stay tuned, because we think we have a better model now that we've had a little time to think about it."

No baseball or softball games will take place until May 11. The state golf and tennis championships are scheduled to begin May 11 in Austin.

Breithaupt and the UIL aren't taking any chances.

"Is there an overreaction? Perhaps," he said. "But what if we went ahead and had a huge outbreak and a lot of it immediately came from our meets?"

The likely plan will be to hold regional meets at some point after the May 11 restart date and then push the state meet back possibly as late as the first week in June to avoid conflicts with graduation.

Anything is better than the original plan.