Attendance on the Rise
December 23, 2016
One of the features of school sports that is unmatched by non-school youth sports travel teams is that school events usually draw crowds of spectators. Not just family members, but classmates and citizens of the local community are drawn to attend school sports events.
Among proof of the enduring importance and high profile of school-sponsored sports is that Michigan High School Athletic Association tournament attendance continues to climb despite all the distractions of modern society. Here are highlights reported by the Michigan High School Athletic Association’s Geoff Kimmerly in October:
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Girls postseason events set a record for attendance for the third straight school year in 2015-16, and overall tournament attendance spiked to its highest total of the last five years.
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Total attendance for 2015-16 was 1,484,095 fans, an increase of 6.8 percent over the previous year. Girls attendance was 473,241 fans, an increase of 10,141 (or 2.2 percent) over the record total from 2014-15. Boys attendance was 1,010,854 fans, a four-year high helped notably by an increased football crowd in 2015.
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The third straight girls record showing got a boost from girls competitive cheer, which set an overall attendance record for the 13th straight season with 39,906 fans and also set attendance records at the Final (19,993) and District (12,867) levels. The track & field and bowling tournaments, which include attendance for girls and boys events combined, also set overall records. Track & field broke a 2011-12 record with 37,773 fans overall and a Regional record of 22,413, and bowling set an overall attendance record for the fifth straight season with 13,919 fans and a Regional record of 9,948.
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Football attendance rebounded significantly after a snowy opening weekend in 2014 resulted in the lowest playoff attendance since the 256-team 11-player field was introduced in 1999. Overall football attendance jumped to a three-year high of 389,897, a 25.4 percent increase from the 2014 postseason and with increases seen at the Pre-District, District and Regional levels.
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Ten more tournament series showed increases in total attendance over the 2014-15 school year: girls gymnastics (2.0 percent), girls softball (2.8 percent), baseball (0.5 percent), girls swimming & diving (12.7 percent), boys swimming & diving (14.6 percent), boys basketball (1.5 percent), girls and boys cross country (combined, 2.1 percent), boys soccer (2.4 percent), team wrestling (1.6 percent) and individual wrestling (1.7 percent) all saw increases in overall attendance from the previous school year. Girls Volleyball fell just shy of equaling the previous year’s record, drawing 110,638 fans, a decrease of 293 from the 2014 season but still the second-most since records first were kept in 1990-91. Girls volleyball did, however, set attendance records at the Regional (26,445) and Semifinal (4,765) levels of the tournament.
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The Boys Basketball Finals draw of 47,407 was a five-year high and a 16.9 percent increase from 2014-15. The Girls Basketball Finals drew 22,301 fans, the most for a Semifinals/Finals weekend since 2004-05 and an increase of 12 percent over 2014-15. Girls basketball’s overall tournament attendance of 169,523 was a decrease of 1.2 percent from 2014-15, but still the second-highest attendance for the sport since 2005-06.
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Overall girls softball attendance increased for the third straight year to 44,515, the highest total since the record-setting spring of 1994-95.
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Team Wrestling Regionals reached a seven-year high and individual wrestling’s rise was fueled by increases at all three levels of that tournament, including five-year highs at the Regional and Final levels.
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Boys Soccer Finals drew 4,906 fans, the most for that event since 2007-08.
Not included in these figures are those who attend MHSAA tournaments in golf, skiing and tennis for which admission typically is not charged and likely pushed the total attendance over 1.5 million for the 2015-16 school year.
“Who Needs This?”
May 24, 2013
One of the best barometers we have for informing us of the health of Michigan’s economy is to examine the number of registrations to be an MHSAA official. When the economy is poor, registrations trend upward; when the economy is improving, registrations decline.
Well, business must be booming in Michigan! Since the 2007-08 school year we’ve fallen almost 2,000 registrations.
Some of this decline can be explained away by the fact that registrations spiked upward when we allowed some free registrations in volleyball and basketball following the 2007 court-ordered changes in the girls volleyball and basketball seasons. But most of the recent decline – certainly the 1,000 decline of the past two years – is unrelated to discontinuing those promotional efforts; and it’s unrelated to a very reluctant resurgence in Michigan’s economy.
What is at work here now are two newer forces that frustrate efforts to maintain a pool of officials that is adequate to handle all the contests of a broad and deep interscholastic athletic program, and to handle those contests well:
- The first is the rise of social media and “instant criticism.” Spectators not only can critique calls before the official gets home from the game, those spectators can do so during the game. Their biased comments – and photos – can go worldwide before the official has left the venue! Really, who needs this? There have got to be less stressful hobbies.
- The second factor is the increased dependence on assigners. As local school athletic directors’ jobs became larger and more complicated, and as they were often given less time to do those jobs, more have had to turn to local assigners who will hire contest officials for groups of schools in one or more sports. As assigners built their little kingdoms, new officials have found it harder to break in and obtain a rewarding number of assignments. Many officials who have found themselves out of sorts with a local assigner have said, “Really, who needs this?” They find more fulfilling ways to spend their time.
The fact is that school-based sports – educational athletics – needs officials. We need them.
We need more officials and we especially need more young officials. Officials are vital members of the team that is necessary to provide a school-based sports program that actually does what it says it does – and that is to teach life lessons, including fair play and sportsmanship.