By Michael Adams
madams@onthesidelinessports.com

Realignment day is Christmas morning in February for high school football coaches and athletic directors across Texas.

Every two years, the University Interscholastic League realigns athletic districts due to growth and in the population and to refresh competition for high schools all over the state.

On Thursday, coaches and athletic directors from the Greater Austin metro area gathered at Kelly Reeves Athletic Complex in north Austin to learn their redistricting fates and fill in their schedules for the next two seasons.

More coverage

• Winners and losers from Thursday’s UIL realignment
• New UIL districts for sports other than football
• New UIL districts for football

The big storyline of the day was the placement of Georgetown and Leander ISD schools for football.

Georgetown and East View, along with Leander, Rouse, Glenn and Cedar Park, move in to District 8-5A-Division I with Lake Belton and Killeen Chaparral.

With Killeen and Shoemaker moving up to Class 6A and Killeen Ellison moving down to 5A-Division II, it was expected for Georgetown and East View to move into a district with Chaparral, which moved up from Division II.

What wasn’t expected was a move to Region II, or as Georgetown head football coach Chuck Griffin called it, “the SEC of 5A football.”

District 8-5A-II will be paired with District 7-5A-II in bi-district playoffs, which will create possible matchups against Highland Park (173 miles from Georgetown), Lufkin (211 miles), Midlothian (150 miles) or Tyler (203 miles).

Another storyline was the movement of Austin ISD schools.

Anderson moves from Class 6A to Class 5A, while Eastside, Travis, Northeast and LBJ moved from Class 5A to Class 4A.

The Trojans join Cedar Creek, Hays, Lehman, Lockhart, Hendrickson and Weiss, along with College Station and A&M Consolidated, in District 12-5A-Division I.

Anderson will join McCallum, Navarro, Crockett, Ann Richards (girls sports only) and Austin LASA in District 24-5A in other sports along with Bastrop and Cedar Creek.

Eastside, LBJ, Northeast and Travis will play in District 13-4A-Division I in football with Austin Achieve, Manor New Tech and Taylor. In all other sports, they they will swap Taylor for Lago Vista.