Parent Appeals Forfeiture of HP Soccer Championship

A Highland Park High School parent has appealed the UIL decision stripping the school of its Class 5A Division II boys soccer championship.

If the UIL’s State Executive Committee accepts her argument, its decision would both restore Highland Park’s title and alter no pass no play policies across Texas.

Highland Park forfeited the soccer championship on April 11 hours after defeating Liberty Hill 2-0, when HP officials discovered that their team had used an academically ineligible player in the game, and self-reported the violation to the UIL.

The student was earning a grade below 70 in precalculus, a class that is exempt from no pass no play rules as an honors course under the Texas Education Code. But school districts can adopt stricter eligibility standards, and if they do, the UIL enforces those instead.

Highland Park’s local standards did not create an eligibility exemption for precalculus. Under HP rules which were enforced by the UIL, the student should have been barred from playing both during the championship match, and during several playoff games.

But at the May 21 appeal, the student’s mother argued that UIL rules enforcing no pass no play requirements that are stricter than the state baseline conflict with state law, and are invalid.

She drew on a letter to the committee from former state senator Florence Shapiro, who was a member of the State Senate and chair of its Committee on Education in 2007, when the Legislature amended no pass no play to limit the ability of school districts to create exemptions to the passing requirement.

The 2007 Legislature was addressing districts’ abuse of no pass no play by exempting relatively easy, non-core vocational courses, according to an article in the Texas Tribune.

But in her letter, Shapiro stated that the Legislature intended for all exemptions created by State Board of Education rule making, including the one for precalculus, to be mandatory. The Legislature was trying to achieve uniformity, the former senator explained. It meant to both limit districts’ discretion, and to encourage students to take challenging honors and advanced placement courses without concerns that they could lose eligibility.

In a letter to the UIL State Executive Committee dated May 22, Rob Eissler, who chaired the Texas House of Representatives’ Committee on Public Education in 2007, also wrote that the Legislature intended to create a list of courses that would be mandatorily exempt from no pass no play requirements, and did not intend for school districts to have discretion to impose the requirements on those courses.

“The UIL has inadvertently positioned itself as a policeman for exactly what the Legislature intended to prevent,” the parent said during her appeal. “A hodgepodge of local eligibility rules.”

The UIL State Executive Committee’s decision could resolve uncertainty that began hours after HP celebrated its Class 5A Division II boys soccer championship, the first in district history.

During the May 21 hearing, HP athletic director Jeremy Gilbert explained that he was in the car heading back after the game when he received a phone call from a high school administrator, alerting him that the school may have played with an ineligible student athlete. 

After confirming the information, he shared it with other district administrators, the principal of Highland Park High School, and the UIL director of athletics. 

“Coming to the decision that we had to come to, it was a decision that nobody on the call wanted to arrive at. I strongly feel that way, especially with regards to my personal connection with these kids,” Gilbert said. “Many of them, I was their principal since elementary or middle school, and of course through high school. I hired the coach. These parents are parents I’ve partnered with for many, many years.”

The student’s mother said that she was aware her son was struggling in precalculus, but did not know that his grade had fallen below the eligibility cut off. 

When her son told her that he had done poorly on a precalculus test, she encouraged him to communicate with his teacher and academic counselor, and was proud of him for doing so.

“The next day, I received a progress report saying that he was in good standing, and that he had no courses below the grade of 75. I went with that. I relied upon that,” she said.

The parent has asked that Highland Park and Liberty Hill be jointly granted championship titles. 

The UIL State Executive Committee did not announce a decision after the May 21 hearing. The committee told the parent that she would receive a written decision, but did not indicate when one might be issued.

Members of Highland Park ISD’s board of trustees wrote in an April 18 email to families that it had “turned over every stone,” but had found no grounds to challenge the forfeiture of the title.