All Photos: Woo Doo Photo / Rodney Wooters
The UIL’s latest Class 6A realignment is official, and it's a familiar lineup for Carroll sports. The Dragons will compete in the same district – 4-6A – for football, basketball and volleyball, creating year-round rivalries and fewer logistical curveballs. While some longtime names are gone, the new district offers plenty of intrigue. Yes, we have some notes.
What You Need to Know
The Dragons and Lady Dragons will share a district with Fort Worth Boswell, Keller, Keller Central, Keller Timber Creek, Northwest High, Northwest Eaton and Northwest Byron Nelson. Boswell, from 3-6A, is the only newcomer; Carroll was already district rivals with all the other teams in the previous cycle.
Travel mostly stays in the north Fort Worth – Southlake – Trophy Club corridor, which matters across three sports and multiple sub-varsity levels. We'll get into logistics in a bit.
Our favorite nugget from the realignment: another cycle of Carroll and Nelson being district opponents in volleyball. Only in Texas could you have two reigning state champions in the same volleyball district less than a year after both cut down nets in Garland. Carroll and Byron Nelson did just that — Carroll the 6A Division II champs, Nelson the 6A Division I champs. It’s absurd, a little funny, and entirely unfair to the rest of the district. Carroll and Nelson students share the same Dan's Bagels, but they can't compete for the same trophy.
What Surprised Us
The headline change is Euless Trinity moving out of the district. In football, that eliminates one of Carroll’s most physical, familiar matchups (though the Dragons easily defeated Trinity last season, 44-6). Haltom and L.D. Bell also moved out, joining Trinity in 8-6A with the Irving and Grand Prairie schools.
What You Need to Know About Boswell
Most Carroll fans will be unfamiliar with Fort Worth Boswell, so here’s the skinny. Although the schools have met in non-district and playoff games, the 2026-28 realignment marks the first time Boswell and Carroll are district rivals in UIL competition.
Boswell is in North Fort Worth near the Alliance area. It’s part of the Fort Worth Independent School District, and its mascot is the Pioneers.
Do Carroll And Boswell Have Any Head-to-Head History?
Not a ton, but there is familiarity.
Girls basketball: Boswell defeated Carroll 57-26 in the 2025 playoffs, controlling the game early and maintaining the lead through the fourth quarter. The Lady Pioneers went on to have one of the best seasons in program history, winning the Class 6A Division II state championship.
Football: Carroll and Boswell haven’t played much recently, with their latest meeting in November 2023. Carroll won convincingly, 70-0.
Boys basketball: Carroll beat Boswell 82-50 in pre-district play for the 2024-25 season.
How Annoyed Should Carroll Fans Be About Travel?
On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being maximum annoyance, I put Carroll fans' and friends' overall chagrin at a 4. While the 2026 football schedule isn’t set, volleyball and basketball will play a home-and-home schedule against each district opponent, meaning fans can count on one away trip to each school in 4-6A.
Thanks to our friends Google Maps, I've put together a one-way travel breakdown from Carroll Senior High:
Boswell: 27 miles, 45-55 minute drive
Northwest: 25 miles, 35-45 minute drive
Eaton: 23 miles, 30-40 minute drive
Nelson: 15 miles, 20-30 minute drive
Timber Creek: 10 miles, 25-35 minute drive
Central: 9 miles, 20-30 minute drive
Keller: 8 miles, 15-20 minute drive
You might think a score of 4 is low, since a few of these drives approach an hour. But this is DFW. Nothing is really close. Speaking of...
Any Other Takeaways From The Realignment?
Enter Wakeland, a Frisco high school moving from 5A to 6A. Not huge news on its own, until you notice Wakeland is the only Frisco school making the jump. The other seven Frisco high schools remain in 5A.
Instead of facing nearby city rivals, Wakeland will travel to four Lewisville schools, two Denton schools and Little Elm. I did the math so you don’t have to: that’s an average of 46 miles round-trip for the poor Wakeland fans at each away game. Suddenly, Carroll’s “short jaunts” don’t sound so bad.