For everybody who bickered and moaned about Prime Prep Academy’s acceptance into the University Interscholastic League, your Friday just got a little bit sweeter.
According to multiple reports, Prime Prep said they will not be playing District 11-3A football this season. According to The Dallas Morning News, the representatives for the new charter school told the 11-3A District Executive Committee the school can’t play varsity football this season because not enough players had the paperwork approved to play football.
The school was opened by former Dallas Cowboys cornerback and NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders, and the school was hotly debated ever since its acceptance into the UIL.
David Smoak originally broke the story with this tweet, sending everybody’s Twitter’s news feed into a frenzy. But Corbett Smith of the DMN said on Twitter the school’s non district games were still going to be played.
As of 3:30 on Friday, UIL AD Mark Cousins said “We don’t have anything officially from the school or the District Executive Committee at this time.”
Now I don’t know exactly what was said at the 11-3A DEC meeting. I do know, however, that for a player to transfer to another UIL member school their Previous Athletic Participation Forms would have to clear, and the transferring student still must live in that attendance zone.
In section three of the PAPF, there are six questions that must be answered “Yes” by the transferring student’s previous school. If a coach answers “No” to any of those questions, the student’s new DEC would hold a hearing to determine the student’s eligibility status.
It’s highly within the realm of possibility that enough PAPF forms didn’t clear. Now 11-3A is the only four team district in all of Class 3A.
With today’s events, a bunch of high school football coaches and fans who were vehemently opposed to the charter’s school’s acceptance into the UIL couldn’t have asked for a better start to the weekend.