The University Interscholastic League, the main governing body for academic, athletic, and music competition among Texas public schools, sanctions many events for students in grades 2-12.
Competition in grades 2-8 is limited to district only. Competition in grades 9-12 advances (in most cases) from district to region to state.
In addition to individual and team awards in the separate contest events, schools are also eligible to win an overall district academic championship award and/or an overall district spring meet sweepstakes award (the latter combines the results of the academic events with the results of singles tennis, doubles tennis, mixed doubles tennis, individual track and field events, relay track events, and team golf). Generally, points are awarded to each school for individuals placing first through sixth place and for teams placing first or second, plus additional points for certain academic contests. Overall academic championship awards are also given at the regional and state level using the same point system.
Schools also compete for the Lone Star Cup, which is awarded to one school state-wide in each conference. Points for the Lone Star Cup are awarded in a different manner than for the academic or spring meet championship awards described above and include results of state-level academic, athletic, and music competitions.
For fine arts and journalism contests, the UIL has not adopted an "amateur rule.” Thus, students who have acted or performed professionally or who have written for a local newspaper may still compete in UIL-sanctioned contests provided they are otherwise eligible.
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, university, league and/or events:
“The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935)
“Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are to be made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime.”
—Janet Frame (b. 1924)
“The great problem of American life [is] the riddle of authority: the difficulty of finding a way, within a liberal and individualistic social order, of living in harmonious and consecrated submission to something larger than oneself.... A yearning for self-transcendence and submission to authority [is] as deeply rooted as the lure of individual liberation.”
—Wilfred M. McClay, educator, author. The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, p. 4, University of North Carolina Press (1994)
“We’re the victims of a disease called social prejudice, my child. These dear ladies of the law and order league are scouring out the dregs of the town. C’mon be a glorified wreck like me.”
—Dudley Nichols (1895–1960)
“Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)