[Oz Referee]

Originally posted by A Pennsylvania Coach

Oz, were you in debate class in high school? I'm wondering if that's where you learned this technique of introducing another un-related topic to distract attention from the point being made. As a high school coach, let me tell you that I am fully capable of concerning myself with what's fair to my team and also preparing them to the best of my ability for playing (and maybe winning :-). I think there are a lot of ridiculous PC things going on in the world, but this isn't one of them. Forget the standpoint of crowd size. Why would it be fair to have 100% of the girls' games be on school nights (sometimes our buses get back after 11:00 PM), and only 50% of the boys' games, especially when it is so easy to fix like Western Massachusetts just did?

OK, you taught me something - I had never heard anyone mention the "getting home late" arguement, only people refering to exposure/crowd size. But then again, since I am in Australia I have not been exposed to this issue much (it has NEVER been raised in Australia to my knowledge).

Even at a professional level, the women's games are held before the men's, at the smae venue. So the Sydney Flames (women's team) might play the Townsville Fire on Friday night, with the game tipping off at 6pm. Then the Sydney Kings play the Townsville Crocs tipping off at 8pm.

Obviously the men get a much better crowd than the women. But it is simply a fact (at least in Oz) that men's basketball draws more spectators than women's, so it makes sense to schedule the games this way.

I agree that at high school level, girls (or boys) should not be disadvantaged because of the timing of their games. I like the solution posted here - Team A boys play Team B at home, and at the same time Team B girls play Team A at home - IMHO the perfect compromise. Anyway, I just find it sad that this is an issue that has required legislation to overcome.