CORPUS CHRISTI, Tx. — The first week of the football season has not even kicked off and we are already seeing a multitude of changes made to schedules due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, we have a shake-up to a district. District 16-4A Division 2, which features Coastal Bend schools like Sinton and West Oso along with three schools in the Valley, will be split up into two different zones.
There will be a north zone that consists of:
- Sinton
- Rockport-Fulton
- Ingleside
- West Oso
- Robstown
And there will be a south zone that is made up of three teams from the Valley:
- Port Isabel
- Raymondville
- Rio Hondo
The reason the split was made had to do with start dates for schools in the southern zone.
Port Isabel and Rio Hondo are not able to start practices until Sept. 28 and Raymondville can not start practice until Sept. 21.
All three schools would need three weeks of practice before playing their first game of the season, which cut their regular seasons to three or four games.
In terms of how this will work for playoff seeding, the teams in the northern zone will fight for three playoff spots and the teams in the southern zone will fight for one.
KRIS 6 News reached out to Sinton head football coach Michael Troutman who confirmed the news.
"This was the fairest and most concrete way for teams to have a district schedule and to play football," Troutman said.
The five schools in the northern zone are now looking for games to play to fill the district games that had been lost.
This is another example of how COVID-19 is changing the landscape of highschool sports in 2020.
