In sports other than football and soccer, Brownwood will face two familiar district foes and welcome a pair of former rivals to District 6-4A action 2022-24.
Currently a member of 6-4A, Brownwood learned during Thursday’s UIL realignment release that new league foes will include holdovers Stephenville and Glen Rose, while Graham and Mineral Wells return to the schedule.
“I thought we might lose Glen Rose, I thought they would move to Region II with some of the Fort Worth schools, but they’re still in our district,” said Brownwood High School girls athletic coordinator Heather Hohertz. “We have another familiar face with Stephenville, they’re always tough, and we add Graham and Mineral Wells. We’ve played them in the past and that will be a change of scenery going that direction, but overall I thought realignment was pretty good for us.”
Sammy Burnett, BISD athletic director said earlier Thursday while also discussing football realignment, “It’s still a worthy district and pretty evenly matched to our current district. I think we can compete well in that district and that’s pretty much what we expected for those sports.”
Hohertz’s Lady Lions basketball team has qualified for the playoffs for the 12th time in her 13 seasons, but Brownwood will feature a much different roster next season.
“We’ll be really young losing six seniors this year,” Hohertz said. “We’ll have three seniors next year that will have to lead a bunch of freshmen and sophomores. But I like the athleticism we have coming up and their willingness to put in hard work. Putting that all together and looking at the district the next two years, I think we can continue our playoff pushes by gelling and getting better.”
Hohertz also broke down what the new district likely means for cross country, volleyball and softball. Soccer realignment will be revealed at a later date.
“For cross country, we were young this year, mostly all freshmen and one sophomore, but I really like their chances to get back to the regional meet,” Hohertz said. “Canyon is the defending state champs, and then Canyon Randall will make the regional brutal.
“For volleyball it’s the same as basketball in that we lose a lot of seniors and have to rely on some young kids, some sophomores and juniors, but I think realignment helped Coach (Allison) Smith and the volleyball team out.
“Where I think it will be toughest is softball because Graham and Mineral Wells have been pretty tough in the past. We’ve been in a district with them before, we’ve seen them in the playoffs. Overall, softball will probably have the biggest challenge out of the realignment change.”
On the boys front, the basketball team currently leads its district with wins over Stephenville and Glen Rose already this season.
Baseball will kick off later this month, with Stephenville and Glen Rose again on the district slate after the Lions posted a 6-6 league mark a year ago.