NORTH RICHLAND HILLS — Todd Dodge didn’t expect he or his staff would predict all the teams in Lovejoy’s district for the next two years.
But the legendary football coach said he was shocked Monday morning after the University Interscholastic League revealed districts for the 2026-28 alignment.
The UIL assigned Lovejoy to District 3-5AII with Argyle, Colleyville Heritage, Grapevine, Nevada Community, Saginaw Eagle Mountain in Fort Worth and The Colony.
“There were a lot of different models, and this is one I never saw,” Dodge said at Birdville ISD Fine Arts/Athletics Complex after the reveal.
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While The Colony is about 20 miles west and Nevada Community is about 20 miles east of Lovejoy High, located in northeast Collin County, the other four schools in District 3-5AII are on the western side of Dallas-Fort Worth.
Argyle is about 50 miles away from Lovejoy, while Colleyville Heritage and Grapevine are about 40. Eagle Mountain is around 70 miles from the school and Nevada Community around 80.
“It looks like they may have just taken right along [State Highway] 121, maybe? I don’t know,” Dodge said.
Lovejoy’s Todd Dodge (center) and other high school football coaches and staff from across North Texas react to the UIL realignment announcement at Birdville Athletic Complex, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, in North Richland Hills.
Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer
Lovejoy, which competed in District 4-5AII with Anna, Denison, Melissa, Prosper Walnut Grove and several Frisco ISD schools the last two-year cycle, was one of multiple Dallas-area schools placed in a UIL district that doesn’t make the most sense geographically.
Ahead of the reveal, The Dallas Morning News predicted the UIL would assign Lovejoy to District 6-5AII with Anna, Celina, Denison, Nevada Community, Prosper Richland and The Colony. Apart from Denison, which is just south of the Texas-Oklahoma border, all of Lovejoy’s district mates would have been within 30 miles. But that’s not what happened.
The UIL also assigned Crowley and North Crowley, former members of a District 3-6A field that included teams mostly on the western side of D-FW, to District 11-6A with Skyline, Duncanville, Mansfield, Mansfield Lake Ridge, Red Oak and Waxahachie.
UIL executive director Jamey Harrison told The News the decisions need to be viewed as a whole.
“When you look at it holistically, you realize there’s not a ton of options. Every one of those districts in the D-FW area is an eight-team district, so we’ve got to put the puzzle pieces together with ISDs that make sense,” Harrison said in reference to the UIL’s 6A districts for 2026-28.
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Following the rules, the UIL kept Birdville ISD’s two high schools together. But instead of keeping Birdville and Richland in 3-5AI with other schools on the western side of D-FW, the UIL moved them to District 6-5AI with Carrollton-Farmers Branch schools, Highland Park and Garland Naaman Forest.
“I was shocked to be in there with the Birdville schools,” said Carrollton Creekview coach Dusty Ortiz, who competed in 6-5AI last season with CFBISD and Dallas ISD schools. “I thought Naaman Forest would be in our district, and I thought we would be with the DISD schools again and possibly Highland Park. All of that worked out, except we weren’t in with the DISD schools.”
Crowley coach Carlos Lynn said placing the two Crowley ISD schools, which are several miles south of Fort Worth and inching toward Burleson, in District 11-6A with schools mostly south of Dallas was “mind-boggling.”
“We’ll pass over a lot of schools to go play some of these schools [in our district], so that’s the madness of it all,” Lynn said. “You never can know the reason, the rationale.”
Lynn thought it would have made more sense for Crowley and North Crowley to remain in Region I and in District 3-6A, which now includes Aledo, Granbury, Weatherford and the Arlington ISD schools: Arlington, Bowie, Lamar, Martin and Sam Houston.
But Harrison said the two Crowley ISD schools wouldn’t have fit there.
“Arlington, for example, has five schools. I can’t split them up by rule. They have to be in the same district together. The Crowley schools, there are two. I can’t split them,” Harrison said. “So if you put the two Crowley schools in with Aledo, that makes that a 10-team district.
”So who would you take out? There’s not two to take out to the east. There are five, because there are five Arlingtons. We’ve got those five-team, six-team, three-team, two-team ISDs, that by rule have to be together.”
Harrison said the UIL had discussed moving Aledo into a district with West Texas schools Midland, Midland Lee, Odessa, Odessa Permian and San Angelo Central, but the governing body decided against it.
“If we were going to send Aledo out west, we would have had to send Weatherford and Granbury out west also. Those schools are not close to each other,” Harrison said. “San Angelo to Midland and/or Odessa is not a short trip. But it’s the shortest trip available.”
Though the arrangement might have worked for Friday night football games, the executive director said it would have been difficult for other sports.
“That is a long way to travel on a Tuesday night when you have school the next day,” he said. “So the cost of travel, the amount of time on a bus, the midweek travel for volleyball and basketball just made that not make sense.”
Schools can appeal to move into a different district, as East Texas school Lufkin did in 2024 when it was assigned to one with D-FW schools about three hours away. But most coaches just accept their new reality for the next two years.
After learning Lovejoy’s fate, Dodge worked to find a fourth nondistrict game for his team in 2026 (he had thought the program would need only three before Monday’s reveal). The coach marveled at the level of competition in District 3-5AII despite not loving the distance between the schools.
“There’s always been surprises,” Dodge said. “Denison, Anna, us and Celina, we thought would all be in together. … But now we’re in with Argyle, with Colleyville Heritage. That’s going to be tough in and of itself.”
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