Football team gets new and different district
The Wimberley Texan football team has a new district, and it is rather different then any district it has been a part of in the past.
Leaving the district are Cuero, Llano and Bandera while Navarro and Eastside Memorial remain. Now in the district are Austin Achieve, Manor New Tech and San Antonio Young Men’s Leadership.
The new schools are from metropolitan area cities with vastly different backgrounds than what Wimberley is used to playing.
“If I had my preference we would be in a district with schools that are similar to us not just number wise but small communities where the whole town comes out and embraces them and you have natural rivalries,” Head Coach Doug Warren said. “That would be my first preference. That is what I would really like. This is as far from that.”
While all the schools have similar enrollments to Wimberley, many of the new schools do not have the level of participation in football that is typical at 4A schools in Texas.
Austin Achieve made the playoffs last season in the Texas Association of Independent Athletic Organizations six-man football league.
San Antonio Young Men’s Leadership is San Antonio’s first all-boys school that expanded to include high school grades in 2017.
Manor New Tech is a new high school that mainly only has grades through the junior year as classes are still filling the school. Last year the team went 1-9 on the season in 3A Division 1.
“I don’t know a whole lot about these schools,” Warren said. “Eastside Memori al we are familiar with and have played them the last few years. Manor New Tech is a new school only opened a couple of years ago. Some of these other teams are more of charter-type schools. Manor New Tech is not like that. They will be a more traditional school where we play their junior high teams and sub-varsities. It is an up and coming program. They will have juniors next year and they are building that program. Young Men’s Leadership is different. It is a leadership academy. Men only at that school. It is a different makeup. They have only been playing a couple of years, and they are pretty small participation wise. I don’t know much about Austin Achieve at this point. They are fairly new.”
Due to the change in district, Wimberley has a different non-district schedule also.
“We tried to beef our non-district schedule up because of how our district fell,” Warren said. “We tried to make that pretty tough and I thought we succeeded in that.”
Wimberley will play Canyon Lake, Cuero, Lampasas, Fredericksburg and 5A school Alamo Heights.
“Us and Canyon Lake always have an agreement we will play that game, and the same thing with Fredericksburg,” Warren said. “It is a short drive and good quality competition. It is always a good game and great crowds.”
While Cuero did not have the success last year that is typical of the program, they are only two years removed from a State Championship. Lampasas went 13-2 last season losing in the State Semi Finals against eventual State Champion Carthage. Alamo Heights went 3-7 in the larger 5A Division 2.