Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Padgett
After reading the article, I thought about something that has to do with our local kids rec league. We play our HS level games on Friday nights (and Saturdays during the day). A lot of the kids who participate tried out for the HS team and didn't make the cut. That's why they then play rec league. I wonder how many of them would go to their HS games as a spectator on Friday nights if they weren't playing rec? We sometimes have as many as nine games that evening which translates to about 150 players (these teams have 8 or 9 players each).
We have our final Board meeting for this league next week and I'm going to suggest exploring moving the HS games to a different night, perhaps Thursdays. It would be a tough scheduling thing since they also practice during the week. I guess we'll see.
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That is a good point. It is not good when one sport splinters its own fan base. There is good reason that football scheduling has largely remained as it has....NFL: Sunday, NCAA: Saturday, High School Friday. It allows football fans to not have to choose between the games and they can all have good attendance. The last thing any one of them wants to do is to kill the interest in the one below them as that will ultimately kill the interest in their games as well.
It sure can't help if the local rec leagues occupy the group of kids that would have been among the most likely to attend the school's games.
A lot of the schools in this area also play boys/girls at opposite sites at the same time. That may be convenient from a gym scheduling point of view but it can't be good for attendance since fans must choose one or the other. The players on the teams can't even support their counterparts. I would expect the best arrangement for fan attendance would be to play boys and girls back-to-back.