Locally, XLIS is a founding member of the Xi’an International Athletics Conference (XIAC), currently made up of six international schools in Xi’an. Each of these six schools has responsibilities to host core sport leagues and invitational tournaments that cover a variety of sports for international students in the city.

Regionally, XLIS joined the Association of China and Mongolia International Schools (ACAMIS) during the 2021-2022 school year. A core component of the association is the ACAMIS Sports League, which serves as an athletics conference for 94 international schools throughout the Greater China region. Since 2023 XLIS has been a fully aligned member of the conference and has competed in the Green Division.

XLIS encourages all students to try out for the school sports teams. However, due to logistical factors and league rules, each team has a limited number of spaces available for participating students. Therefore, while all students are invited to try out for any team within their age bracket, only a certain number of students will be selected for each team.

Students in the primary school will be notified of tryout times during PE class or via Seesaw message, while secondary school students will be notified during homeroom or via email. In some instances, all students will be able to participate in training but may be restricted from a tournament due to registration limits per school.

Coaches will conduct at least two tryout sessions and select students using the following criteria:

1. Commitment
2. Attitude
3. Skill level

During a tryout, coaches will prepare a series of assessments to determine which students best fit the selection criteria. The coach will communicate all selection decisions to every student who attended a tryout in a personalized manner. This may be a face-to-face conversation or an e-mail. Students and parents may schedule a meeting with a coach 24 hours after selection decisions are made if they would like further information as to why a child was not selected to a team.

Most core sport teams, with some exceptions, will have training on Mondays and Fridays from 3:30-4:30 PM. Other teams may train during ECA time on Tuesday and Thursdays or during lunch periods. U19 teams training for ACAMIS tournaments will have an additional Wednesday training session on Wednesdays from 3:30 to 5:30 PM.

In addition, any students selected for a team will not need to pay fees to participate. All uniforms, coaching, and travel to games in Xi’an will be arranged and paid for by XLIS. The only time extra fees will be required is if a student has opted to participate in a travel tournament as part of ACAMIS, where the hotel, inter-city travel cost, and tournament entry fee will need to be borne by the participant.

Swimming is unique and follows different protocols for team selection and training times than the other interscholastic sports offered at XLIS. Swim team selection takes place based on qualifying times, whereby interested students will need to meet certain time standards in at least one stroke to become a member of the team. The time standards for each age group and stroke are listed in the table below:

Swim team training will occur in the XLIS pool every Tuesday and Thursday morning from 7:00 AM to 7:50 AM. Transportation to school on these mornings is the responsibility of the parent. Participating student-athletes are encouraged to arrive with enough time before 7:00 AM to get changed and be ready for practice.

Student-athletes that are not able to arrive to school for morning training will need to communicate with the school’s Head of Aquatics, Mr. Vinson Gou (vinson.gou@xalis.com), to either apply for a training exemption or provide evidence that the child is training at a swim club outside of school.