Tawa’s HS Dots: Controversy in Texas; Good Assumption takes LIVT

This is “Dots,” VolleyballMag.com’s weekly look at 10 things in high school volleyball, past or present, that interest me and hopefully will interest you. Look for Dots every Tuesday until the last high school state championship in November:

• In most states, parochial, Christian and other private schools usually have the leg up on public school volleyball competition for myriad reasons, including earlier starts and the ability to draw from a wider area. 

That has not been the case historically in Texas, where the public school league, UIL, has been consistently stronger than the private school leagues, led by TAPPS.

That may be changing.

Over the past few years, the privates have lured away successful public school coaches Ryan Mitchell (Lovejoy and others) and Mike Carter (Reagan of San Antonio) and they have transformed Prestonwood Christian Academy and Cornerstone Christian, respectively, into elite national programs with talent to compete at the very highest levels.

This is creating a backlash among the public schools in Texas that have enjoyed superiority for the almost 25 years I’ve been covering the sport.

Just last week, the McKinney School District near Dallas canceled Boyd High School’s scheduled match versus Prestonwood. Those teams played earlier in the year and Boyd (17-1) stunned the Plano school (14-3) in five sets. But the highly anticipated rematch was nixed before first serve.

“We wanted to schedule teams that are in UIL and follow UIL regulations,” Boyd coach JJ Castillo told the Dallas Morning News. “I think it’s because the rules are so different for private schools and public schools.”

• In the 32 years that Ron Kordes has been coaching Louisville Assumption, the Rockets have won Kentucky’s single-class state tournament a ridiculous 22 times; ridiculous, because of the presence of other highly competitive programs, like Mercy Academy, Sacred Heart, Notre Dame and St. Henry, to name a few. Indeed, during that span, Assumption has branded itself as perhaps the nation’s most successful program, with several mythical national titles to its credit.

But after winning eight titles between 2010 and 2019, something strange has happened in Kentucky the past three seasons: Assumption has not won a state title. Notre Dame won in 2020 and last season, with St. Henry taking the crown in 2021.

• On Saturday, Assumption took a step towards reclaiming its place atop…