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Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but another nice development went into effect a few years ago when the OHSAA made it known that state qualifiers could get free tickets for Sat. even if they were done competing on Fri.
Yes, they did that. All of our kids got in both days.
There are limits on the number of coaches, players, and cheerleaders allowed into games for free in football and basketball.
i might be wrong but in the past at one time didn't they rotated the Division start times.
Agreed. The old rotating 3-year rotating system of schedules tried to alleviate that.
Disagree. Hottest part of day is D2
Galesxc is right on there. Later in the day is much more likely to be the warmest part of the day for the state meet. That is almost always true of cities and all the more so for a stadium, which is a giant heat sink reradiating accumulated heat. In any event, rotating the divisions is more fair.
In my 47 years of attending as an athlete, then spectator, then as a coach, all state qualifiers have received admission into the meet on both days, regardless of whether they moved on to the finals or not. Over the years in talking to coaches, many assumed that this was not the case, but it's always been a thing since at least 1977.
As someone who has coached teams in each of the three time slots and must make the state meet an overnight trip from the far northeast, I can say that without a doubt the logistics of being in the third session are no fun at all. At least when it was rotated, you only had to come up with ways to keep kids occupied all day until the third session every three years. As it is, D-III and D-II can stick to a fairly normal schedule of eating, arriving, warming up, etc., similar to many/most regular season invitationals. D-I, not so much. It might not be a big deal for those teams living close enough to sleep in their own beds, but for those of us that have to make it a weekend it's a challenge.
badger1, you make a good point about the third session logistics. Something I hadn't really thought about before. I was at the state meet a couple times in the early 90s when I was coaching in central Ohio at the meet was at Ohio Stadium. Then after a few years of MS coaching, I was back when it was at Welcome and I was coaching in Cincinnati. Then I was back in central Ohio and going to Ohio State (or Darby, which is ten minutes from our school). So I haven't thought about what to do with kids during the day before. Another good reason to rotate time slots.
To add to it, you have to check out of most hotels by noon (1pm at the latest), so there's automatically a few hours of down time that need filled for those who stayed overnight but aren't competing until the 3rd session.
The D1 football title game has not been in that last time slot on Saturday for a few years, primarily due to anticipation of Ohio State being in the BIG championship game and also due to the fact that the OHSAA seems to have caught on to the notion that a considerable portion of the casual fans aren't going to stay for that last football game, no matter which division it is.
I thought that was made pretty clear a couple years ago when D3 had the largest attendance of the three meets.
You’re right, I had completely forgotten that!
And I have heard from meet management that D1 was just behind D3 in attendance with D2 quite a way behind the two. For the logistics of the meet and parking-traffic OHSAA want to keep D1 and 3 from overlapping.
Like others have noted football has the same issues, if you play the early Sat. morning game in football and live in WCO you have to leave at 5 30 or 6 am.
The rotation system was never fair to D2. They never got to run in the cool mornings. It was 1-2-3 one year then 3-2-1 the next. D2 always ran in the middle of the day.