Is bigger better? Enrollment has varying effects on athletic success in 2021-22 Breazeale Cup
Bigger isn’t always better, at least when it comes to athletic success for area high schools.
According to coaches and administrators throughout the Austin area, it takes more than raw student numbers to win games and collect trophies. It takes commitment from both a school’s athletic staff and its administration, it takes investment from a school district and its community, and it takes buy-in from a student body that can participate in an increasing number of extracurricular opportunities.
Mixing all those factors together on the area’s largest campuses isn’t easy, as is evident from the 2021-22 Breazeale Cup, the American-Statesman’s annual rankings of Central Texas high school athletic programs.
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Some athletic programs with large enrollments struggle to find their footing amid other campus concerns, some mix success with disappointment, and some marshal all their resources into a successful athletic program regardless of the season.
Breazeale Cup winner Lake Travis ‘tries to offer something for everybody’
Lake Travis, the second-largest school in the Austin area, with more than 3,600 students, certainly lands in that third category. The single high school district on the southern shore of Lake Travis claimed its second consecutive Breazeale Cup title by rolling up 98 points. The area’s first boys soccer title was the highlight of the year for the Cavaliers, but Lake Travis excelled in almost every sport. The Cavs reached the postseason in every traditional team sport and won four of a possible eight district titles in those sports. They fared well in individual sports, too; tennis, golf, swimming and cross-country athletes all had success in the postseason.
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The secret for such success is, well, no secret, says Hank Carter, the head football coach and athletic director for Lake Travis.
“As boring as it sounds, it comes down to our parents and the community,” he said. “We’ve had an influx of young families in recent years, and they have high standards when it comes to academics, athletics and all the extracurriculars. They support what we’re doing, and that’s vital to any success.”
Managing growth both on his campus and in the sprawling school district has been one of the biggest challenges for Carter and his staff. When he arrived on campus as an assistant to Chad Morris in 2008, Lake Travis had an enrollment of 1,640 and competed in Class 4A, then the classification for the state’s second-largest schools. Lake Travis submitted an enrollment of 3,680.5 to the UIL last fall, when the state’s governing body for high school athletics collected enrollment numbers from across Texas to determine district alignments for the next two school years. Only Round Rock, with 3,847 students, has a larger reported enrollment among Austin-area campuses.
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The Lake Travis athletic program has grown accordingly. Every sport for both boys and girls now has the same extended athletic periods, and the facilities have been improved for virtually every UIL-sanctioned sport. Carter and his staff implemented a specific track and cross-country class several years ago to offer another athletic opportunity, and it now has approximately 200 students.
For a school that Carter says has about 40% of its students involved in athletics, such a class not only alleviates some enrollment pressures on other athletic periods but also offers students another option for participation.
“We’ve followed the mantra ‘If you build it, they will come,’” Carter said. “Our community has shown that if you offer opportunities for their kids, they will put their kids in it. And it’s not just athletics or curriculars; our arts programs and other extracurriculars are outstanding, too.
“We just have to make sure we are creating opportunities for as many kids as we can. We try and offer something for everybody.”
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Lake Travis district Superintendent Paul Norton, who arrived two years ago, said Carter’s approach to encouraging participation in athletic programs meshes with the goal of the school district.
"Lake Travis ISD truly believes in educating the whole child,” Norton said. “Extracurricular activities are vital to the success of a large percentage of students, and that is definitely true at Lake Travis.
“Our athletic programs are top-notch because of the high expectations and partnerships between our coaches and parents. Our student-athletes are successful in all sports because of the incredible amount of time and energy they invest in our programs each year. Under the leadership of (Carter), and in partnership with our incredible coaches, teachers and staff, I’m certain LT will continue to make our community proud."
Carter and Lake Travis officials might soon have to apply that approach on a districtwide level. The Lake Travis school board will meet Wednesday, and district spokesman Marco Alvarado said board members are expected to decide whether to put the prospect of a second high school up for a vote in November. The district has already purchased land near Texas 71 and Reimers-Peacock Road, near the West Cypress Hills neighborhood, for a second high school.
The school district’s bond advisory committee presented details of a potential $703 million bond referendum for three new schools and several other projects at its June 15 board meeting.
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“When we first got here, (former athletic director) Jack Moss told us that we’d have a second high school in seven or eight years,” Carter said. “It seems like I’ve been hearing seven or eight years for a long time, but this time it seems like it will happen.”
A second high school will forever alter the fabric of the Lake Travis athletic program, but Carter said, “We’ll support it the same way we’ve done.
“We’ll want to have as many kids involved as possible and offer as many opportunities as we can,” he said.
Flipping cultures, handling cuts
Involving students remains the biggest challenge for many athletic programs in the area, especially the ones that rival Round Rock and Lake Travis for the area’s largest enrollment. When Del Valle football coach and campus athletic coordinator Bobby Acosta attended his school’s graduation earlier this summer, he could only shake his head at the potential.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I said to myself, ‘Where did all these kids come from?’ And they were big kids, too.”
Del Valle reported an enrollment of 3,578 to the UIL last fall, making the school the third-largest in the Austin area. But the single high school district hasn’t translated that size to athletic success in recent seasons; Del Valle garnered just four points in both the 2020-21 and 2021-22 Breazeale Cup standings, with the boys soccer and boys basketball programs accounting for all those points.
Del Valle is similar to Lake Travis in size but not much else; the high school has an economically disadvantaged rate of 83%, according to a database maintained by The Texas Tribune, and has a minority enrollment of 95.8%. In comparison, Lake Travis is 68% white, with an economically disadvantaged rate of 8%.
Acosta acknowledges the inherent difficulties of working in a community with wide swaths of poverty, but he also praises his students’ grit and dedication. Now about to start his second season at the school, Acosta proudly points out that his staff hosts approximately 200 kids a day at Del Valle’s summer strength and conditioning program. That participation in offseason workouts will translate to success in the fall, he said, and it could also spread throughout the entre athletic department.
“We’ve flipped the culture,” Acosta said. “When I first got here, the kids wouldn’t even talk to me. I think there was a fear of failure. Now we’re getting those kids coming to me, saying, ‘Coach, I want to play football.’ Creating that atmosphere where kids want to be here, that’s huge. I have kids coming up here every day, and they don’t even want to leave.”
While Acosta and the Del Valle athletic staff continue to try to build up numbers in almost every sport, coaches at Round Rock — the other area school with more than 3,000 students — deal with other issues.
Round Rock lands somewhere between Lake Travis and Del Valle when it comes to participation. Certain sports, such as softball, baseball and volleyball, enjoy participation rates that make the day of cuts a painful part of the process. Other sports, such as girls basketball, lack those numbers.
Diane Watson, Round Rock’s volleyball coach and an assistant athletic coordinator, said she has “anywhere from 65 to 70 kids in the program” spread across the varsity squad and three subvarsity teams. In comparison, Watson noted that girls basketball has three teams and about half the number of athetes.
But having more student-athletes brings more than its share of issues, Watson said. Cutting players from a team can cause fissures in the program and the community, and it can lead to tension in the athletic offices. Such cuts often come after a condensed, three-day window of tryouts in early August.
Watson said it’s particularly difficult for male athletic directors and coordinators to understand about the decisions to cut players from a team, since most campus athletic supervisors also are football coaches.
“The only time I ever hear a parent complaint is when I have to cut kids,” she said. “Wrap your head around that, school board and football coaches. There’s not a single school district that I know of where a head football coach has to cut kids. They just don’t understand those complaints.”
Like many other coaches, Watson finds a home on her varsity squad for all seniors who stay with the program during all four of their high school seasons. But players who rarely leave the bench can have different motivation, especially as a season draws toward a close, along with the end of demanding practices before or after classes.
“You get to the playoffs, and some kids are happy that this could be their last practice, while the other kids are saying, ‘Wait a minute; we have a lot of playoff games left,’” Watson said. “There’s no doubt that there can be tension in the air.”
A member of the University of Texas Hall of Honor who starred on the Longhorns’ volleyball team in the 1980s, Watson has coached in the area for more than 30 years, including seven seasons as an assistant at Texas State. While describing some of the challenges that come with coaching a sport popular on a campus, Watson also acknowledged the benefits.
“Having a lot of kids that want to play, it’s a good problem to have, especially at the 6A level,” she said. “There’s a lot of competition out there for kids, and you’re glad they’re playing your sport.”
Big fish, big pond
How the Austin area’s largest schools in Classes 6A and 5A fared in the 2021-22 Breazeale Cup standings (enrollment numbers are taken from the UIL’s biennial snapshot day last October; listed are enrollment rank, school and enrollment, with Breazeale Cup finish in parentheses):
Class 6A
Round Rock, 3,847 (18)
Lake Travis, 3,680.5 (1)
Del Valle, 3,578 (57)
Cedar Ridge, 2,966 (31)
Stony Point, 2,877 (48)
Class 5A
Johnson, 2,474 (27)
Dripping Springs, 2,335 (5)
Weiss, 2,298 (13)
Manor, 2,272 (34)
Anderson, 2,232 (8)
Previous Breazeale Cup winners
2016-17: Liberty Hill, 85 points
2017-18: Liberty Hill, 105 points
2018-19: Liberty Hill, 104 points
2019-20: Cedar Park, 67 points*
2020-21: Lake Travis, 81 points
* Points did not include spring sports canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin area high schools have varying success with enrollment numbers
