Playoff attendance week 2

Doverbuck1

Doverbuck1

Well-known member
Attended the Dover Aurora game and again the attendance was disappointing. Dover visitor side seats 1,800 and it was about half ful maybe 1,000. Home side was probably 60% positive side it was a very enthusiastic crowd on both sides.
 
 
Heath the home team had a very light crowd. Indian Valley the road team had more than Heath but not large by no means.
Guess it was not the rain or threat of that kept fans away as many seemed to suggest after week one of the playoffs.
 
I counted only 400 fans on Perry’s home side last night against Girard. .
I’ll be watching online the rest of the way as well.
 
Probably. Better off having higher seed the home field until final 4. Might help some. HS sports in general is struggling with attendance no matter the sport.
 
Attended Uniontown Green at North Canton Hoover. Great crowd on both sides. Certainly some empty seats but North Canton Hoover has a pretty large stadium.. I'm just guessing 6,000 or so?
 
Sycamore's turnout was decent considering they were a road underdog. Princeton's turnout at home was putrid. For an 11-1 team with firepower, you'd think they could fill at least a third of their home stands. Maybe next week against Moeller will turn out some old heads.
 
NeoFootballFan75 said:
Canfield v Hubbard was pretty packed, but those are 2 very good teams from the same general area
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Was all the seating on both sides full?
For reference the away side seats exactly 2000 (but the band probably took some of those seats)
The home side seats 1650 roughly
 
Doverbuck1 said:
Odd that your visitor side is bigger.
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They spent all the money putting in new away stands and then didn't have any money left to do the home side because the price of steel doubled from when they got their estimates. The home side used to be even smaller (approx 1200) until they added the new stands for the students. I really don't like Canfield's stadium very much, Dover's is much nicer. Canfield's was adequate for 20 to 30 years ago, now it is very lackluster compared to most others in the area. The main home side seats have been in place since 1983 or something like that. The visitors side was built brand new in 2004, but the old seating was wooden and not handicapped accessible, which was the main reason for their replacement, not being ADA compliant. The old seating held more than the new seating that replaced it (old was roughly 2500). For a brief period they had the old end zone seating for the band set up for additional seating on the away side.
 
Mogadore vs Hillsdale. Mogadore a little better attendance but still lots of empty seats on the home side. Hillsdale had a nice crowd. Just seems fans have for some reason lost interest this year. Price, on line sales, COVID-19....Let's Go Brandon???
 
Norton-Holy Name was full, granted Norton only seats 2,500. The Norton side looked absolutely packed (band sat on a small auxiliary bleacher on the far side ... not sure if thats typical ... and there was a small auxiliary bleacher set up on the other side).

Holy Name side (maybe 500 capacity on the visitor side) was full. It wasn't jam packed but close enough where probably 50-75 people just watched along the fence. ... Norton side also had probably 50-75 along their fence as well.

Norton has a new, great little stadium. The track and huge area between it and the sidelines though kills a lot of the intimacy. Great parking situation too since they put the new school/stadium on what seems like a gigantic 1 square mile plot of land. Easily bigger footprint than even Medina, which is a big D1 school.
 
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Doverbuck1 said:
Simkon
That’s a heck of a story but now I am curious as to why they have not finished the project in the last 17 years?
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They decided to build an addition to the locker room and weight room and improve the facilities for the wrestling program with most of the money they have raised. They built the new stands for the student section and considered the project complete. They also wasted a considerable amount of money on a huge band shell that seats like 300, when the band is usually only around half that size. The band hasn't been that big since the new band director took over about 15 years ago. This is a function of declining enrollment and a terrible band director. And then they just spent a lot of money for a new playing surface recently, since the old surface was over 15 years old and definitely pretty worn out when it was finally replaced. They also had some drainage problems and problems with the track and had to redo the track several times due to various issues.
 
The lagging attendance has much to do with the changing demographics of the state and nation, cultural factors and declining youth participation.

There’s a lot more student mobility than there was three to four decades ago. Many of those who once filled the stands have aged out. Odds are their grandkids don’t attend the same school as their kids did.

There are also cultural factors tied to the decline. Within some cultures, watching kids play sports means considerably less. My buddy is a project manager at a large, diverse corporation in suburban Columbus. He gets a different reaction to telling his suburban coworkers he’s going games than he does to his neighbors in a rural part of the state. We are one of a very few nations that host interscholastic competition.

Declining youth participation is probably the biggest reason I don’t see the decline correcting itself. Fewer kids playing at a younger age translates to fewer paying customers years later.

For these reasons, I’ve learned to embrace school sports for what they are, and worry less about what they were and where they’re going.
 
Liberty Center @ Columbus Grove had one of the best crowds at Grove in the last 15 years... crappy result for Grove fans but was a close game with a great crowd
 
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