JSnipes

I don't like it either. I don't like it when more than half a district makes the playoffs. I know they couldn't have done this, but with four teams going to the playoffs I would like to see districts have at least eight teams.
I liked it at three teams, gave you a reward for winning district.

As a PNG graduate and a teacher/coach, I have no problem with adding grey and/or black to a color scheme. However, when grey or black (which I say are good accent colors if they aren't part of your school colors) become your primary color and they aren't your school colors, it becomes an issue.

Usually with a three way tie you play it out. I guess they could take the overall record against those three teams have against one another. I don't know what the District minutes say. I would assume the teams flip and two teams play Friday night and the winner of that game play the team that won the flip on Saturday.

That photo isn't showing up. I know you are from Groves as well. Is the entire uniform black and gray or just used as accents? I guess we will all miss the era's in which we grew up in if it was a good one...  The era in which I grew up was a good one for sure.

Coach Elliott is a friend of mine. I was very happy that she ended up applying for this job. Bob Hope, you made a great hire!!!

Would they be traveling a lot for football? Their non-football district would likely be with LCM, BC, HF, HJ, OF, WOS, and Silsbee. That's not much traveling. 

Agreed but that is supposed to be the point of Area, to make sure the top athletes are getting there.
 
Last year Panhandle went 1-2-3 at state in the Boys shot put. That would not have happened had UIL not added the ninth qualifier. One of those three boys would have been sitting at home and they finished 1-2-3. I understand the back in the day argument (when I was in school it was top 2 to regionals), but the point of the new rules is to make sure the best athletes get through. I'm not saying that I agree or disagree with the new rule because it doesn't matter, the rule is in place. The best overall athletes will never advance until Area is mandatory. 

I am a local head track coach and I really liked the idea of Area when it first came about. The idea was to make Regionals better because you don't always get the top 3 in each race from each district because some of those athletes will be dropped from individual races and put on relays. You also have some districts that are tremendous in some events and it's very possible that the #4 in that district is good enough to make the Regional finals.
 
With that said, the idea of Area is good but I agree that it should become mandatory. If our Area meet gets rained out it will be very unfortunate for many athletes. For example, our top 5 shot put throwers trumped our neighboring districts first place throw. You also see the same results in the 300mH. Our top 6 were better than their first place finish. You can look at the results and see this in numerous events, some they win and some we win. Obviously this doesn't mean it will happen again when the districts meet up. You don't know the conditions each district was facing and how hard some athletes had to push to win their event. The purpose of Area was to benefit the athletes and get the best athletes through to Regionals. The only way to make this happen is to make it mandatory.

Those three girls will be very fun to watch over the next three years. I also had a Sophomore that went 13:05 and 5:53 the first two weeks of the season but was out with mono. There are at least three 8th graders coming up that can run as well. Two from HF and one from OF, I don't know about LCM as they are in a different MS district. The distance races next year should be extremely fast.