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The Indiana High School Athletic Association recently released some alarming attendance figures for the first class basketball tournament this year, but most local schools were not affected.
Attendance dropped 6.1 percent from the previous year in the girls tournament and an amazing 21.5 percent in the boys tournament. However, the four local schools that acted as host sites for the tournament did not see the lack of attendance like others across the state.
Part of that, as expected, has to do with the participating schools.
In the girls sectional at Wawasee, NorthWood and Lakeland hooked up for the much-anticipated rematch of a regular season game in which Lakeland handed the Panthers their only loss of the season to that point. That helped to account for the fourth-best attendance of the 16 Class 3A sectionals and ninth best overall.
"We had tremendous attendance figures with NorthWood and Lakeland," Wawasee Athletic Director Mary Hurley said. "It's wonderful to host an IHSAA tournament. It's great for the community to get people into the town and eating at your restaurants. And you get to show off your school a bit."
In the boys sectional at Triton, only one team had a record above .500 and four or five teams had legitimate chances at winning the sectional. That provided for higher attendance figures, but this sectional was still only 10th of 16 Class A tournaments.
"The first night, we had a team that came from far away," Triton Athletic Director Mike Byron said. "The last night, we also had one school from far away. I think having seven schools hurt a little because of having just one game that first night. I think crowds will come up over the years."
The girls regional at Triton fared well, though. Much of that had to do with the Trojans first-ever appearance in the regional. The Triton regional had the second largest crowd of the 32 regionals and easily the largest among any A school.
"The girls regional was very well attended," Byron said. "I thought a lot of things were successful and overall, it was very positive."
The boys and girls regionals and the girls semistate at Warsaw posted stark differences. The regionals were very low in comparison to others around the state while the semistate was attended very well. Both regionals were sixth in attendance among the eight 4A sites, but the girls semistate was second in the state.
"(The girls tournament) was about what we expected, especially with NorthWood here we knew they'd have a good following," Warsaw assistant athletic director Rachel Etherington said. "Since Warsaw was not in (the boys regional), it was a different feel. The fans of the other schools seemed to really get into it from my perspective."
The boys sectional at NorthWood featured two schools gearing for each other, NorthWood and Northridge, in the sectional championship. That helped to give the school the third highest attendance among 3A schools and ninth overall, even though Angola snuck into the championship.
The girls regional at NorthWood featured the host school against Northern Lakes Conference rival Plymouth, and that helped to bring in the largest crowd of any 3A site and the third largest overall.
"As far as expectations go, I thought we'd sell them out," NorthWood athletic director Todd Sheets said. "Part of it may have been our fault, because we said that tickets would be hard to come by, and we may have scared some people off. But the crowds were still good and I sure thought it was tournament atmosphere."
