The longer a player has been on a school sports team, the more familiar they are with their opponent’s athleticism, integrity, and strategy. However, when they are faced with a new opponent than before this can create some challenges.

  A new district change has led to some changes in the training, time involvement and mindset of the football, volleyball, basketball and cross country athletes at Bowie. Starting this school year Manor and San Marcos have been added the Bowie sports schedule while Austin, Westlake and Lake Travis have been left off. Also the number of teams decreased from nine teams in District 14-6A to six.

“Although the district change has surprised a lot of people, I feel like my teammates and coaches are very adaptable and we handle changes well,” junior basketball player Maddie Arrington said. “We are always willing to do whatever it takes to better ourselves and we always try to keep a positive attitude and work hard in order to meet our goals.”

The new district change has opened up some doors for the cross country runners.

“I think it has definitely changed the mindset of our runners,” junior Tyler David said. “In our new district, we have a lot more of an opportunity to advance to regionals, so I think it’s just given us a goal to push toward and look forward to.”

The football team has altered the training to help the players be prepared for their new opponents.

“We have done more running this season with a focus on endurance to help us in the fourth quarter of the game when it’s needed,” senior Troy Sanders said. “We know it sucks when we are running but we look towards the future in games where it pays off.”

The football time not only has adapted their training for the new season but they also have had to cope with traveling to games as well.

“We had to travel to Shotwell stadium which was four hours away,” Sanders said. “We have a great coaching staff and managers to help plan out our trips; they help us set our team schedule and determine our route that we would take.”

However, for the girls volleyball teams, the new schedule hasn’t had a huge impact on their season.

“The district change hasn’t affected us much,” senior Ellie Crosley said. “There’s not a team that I’d miss playing because we were able to play our toughest competitors from last year’s districts in pre-season.”

On the other hand, Lake Travis High School is no longer scheduled to play against Bowie which is disappointing for some of the school’s athletes.

“I will definitely miss playing Lake Travis, they had good players and put up real challenge for us during the season,” Sanders said. “They were usually the team we trained hardest for.”

Sanders even has a opponent from Lake Travis who he is going to miss squaring up against.

“I will miss playing Sammy Ochoa because he would always put up a challenge on defence,” Sanders said.

Being able to have some familiarity to the schedule is also an important factor as well.

“I’m looking forward to playing Anderson because I have a good friend that plays there, but we have played them in previous years,” Crosley said.

Sanders is also excited to get the opportunity of playing some of the new teams on this year’s schedule.

“I am looking forward to playing Manor the most because they are known for having some real athletes,” Sanders said. “What will be challenging about Manor is their offense because the do have some really fast players on their team, also they have a decent defensive line.”

Cross country is looking forward to the idea of having a new challenging team to face also.

“San Marcos looks like they’re really strong this year so we’re looking forward to competing against them,” junior cross country runner Tyler David said. “We looked at some of their times last season and they returned a lot of their top runners, so they look like they will be really fast.”

The Bowie athletes just want to try their hardest this season to do well and not let the new district distract them from achieving their goals.

“What’s most important to me is being able to see our team get better and just look at the improvement we’ve been making as a team,” David said.