I can agree with everything you said here, but this is not what I took from your first post regarding football/subsidizing. But like you said, tax payer for ALL of the fields. Just becasue football doesn't have an equivolent non school option doesn't make it the monster. That could be my misinterpretation (as a HS football coach I might have jumped to conclusions). Of course football needs high school football. I do not have a kid in high school, so I don't yet understand why so many hate HS softball. I guess I will have to wait and learn, but I look at high school sports as a chance to play for your school and community. Sure they might not be as good as your travel team, but take it for what it is and enjoy watching your daughter play and have fun...she didn't HAVE to play for her high school. I don't know any better at this point, maybe my opinion will change when I do have a dog in the hunt.
Keep this attitude and your DD will enjoy her high school experience!
IN
ballguy wrote: I do not have a kid in high school, so I don't yet understand why so many hate HS softball. I guess I will have to wait and learn, but I look at high school sports as a chance to play for your school and community. Sure they might not be as good as your travel team, but take it for what it is and enjoy watching your daughter play and have fun...she didn't HAVE to play for her high school. I don't know any better at this point, maybe my opinion will change when I do have a dog in the hunt.
Keep this attitude and your DD will enjoy her high school experience!
There are many factors that make HS Softball and many other sports second tier to HS football. HS football is often the main revenue generator of all sports, our school collects 60-100K in ticket sales alone. Every extra game in the playoffs means potential for 12K in ticket sales so their is a significant incentive to have a strong program and a reason why the football coach is usually selected by a commitee after a serious interview process. Keeping a HS football coaching job means winning, period. So to keep that job you will see very involved coaches putting in 100's of hours outside practice and games helping develop youth programs as feeders and setting up off season opportunities(i.e. structured body building/ speed and agility programs for the players. Many other HS coaching positions are filled literally by whichever teacher volunteers. You may get a great motivated highly involved volunteer, or you might get someone who punches the clock, comes to practice and games and then waits for next year. When you deal with travel ball the volunteer coaches are usually parents which can lead to issues with bias, and/or lack of knowledge, but at the least they are highly motivated to help the team get better if only for the sake of their own kid.
Usually their is one other sport aside from football that draws non-parent fans to HS games. In Indiana, I'm guessing that's basketball, in MN it's hockey. For all other sports attendence is usually parents of players and from a revenue standpoint, the parents will probably come regardless if the team is good or bad so you won't see HS put much effort into finding quality coaches for sports that don't generate revenue.
If your kid showed up to football practice and the HS coach started telling the lineman that they need to stand up faster after the snap because the low man never wins the blocking battle, or if he instructed running backs to run with the ball held in one hand way out front so that they maximized their yardage gain, you might start to feel some of the pain felt by people who will run down HS softball. If your fortunate you'll have a good HS coaches in all your kids sports, but the reality is that their is little quality control outside the money makers.
- SnocatzDad
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SnocatzDad, there are no schools in Indiana making 12K on Football tournament games. The fact of the matter is, Football is a losing proposition at many high schools. It's a very expensive sport to field, and you've only got 4-5 home games per year.
Football is just a different animal, it's not a sport conducive to multi-game weekend tournaments. I'm not going to say never, but the it's not likely to give way to travel/club teams anytime soon.
Football is just a different animal, it's not a sport conducive to multi-game weekend tournaments. I'm not going to say never, but the it's not likely to give way to travel/club teams anytime soon.
Every man lives by a code:
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1.Always look cool
2.Never get lost
3.If you get lost, look cool
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slapperdad - Posts: 887
- Joined: Fri May 01, 2009 7:28 pm
We're a moderate sized suburban High School with about 1500 students. Stadium seats about 3K and they get $6 a ticket for adults $4 for kids 12 and under. I would imagine there are comparable schools around indianapolis size wise.
IME the smaller rural areas might have smaller class sizes and smaller towns, but the friday night game is a proportionally bigger event so still a money maker.
What's the average ticket price to attend a HS sport in Indiana??
IME the smaller rural areas might have smaller class sizes and smaller towns, but the friday night game is a proportionally bigger event so still a money maker.
What's the average ticket price to attend a HS sport in Indiana??
- SnocatzDad
- Posts: 514
- Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2009 9:04 am
It's $5 at most of the places i've been.Most schools offer a season sports pass, all sports no matter what, except tournaments and state tournament play. $125 for a family pass at our school. Moderate at 1500? My daughters freshman class had that! Won't be that many at graduation:)! We are no where near the biggest!
- looking in
- Posts: 268
- Joined: Thu Oct 02, 2008 9:20 am
Snocat, our high school association runs the tournament here. The long and short of it are that the participating schools divide the money evenly after everyone is paid and all expenses are paid, at the sectional level. Obviously large school sectionals have a bigger pot to divide. I would also add that Indiana has an "all in" format, teams don't qualify, everybody gets at least one tournament game.
At the Regional and Semi-State level no body gets anything. All expenses are paid and the rest of it goes to the IHSAA. At the state level schools get some sort of monetary reward, I'd have to check the bulletin to see exactly what the split is.
I'm afraid you missed my point regarding Football being a money maker. Football is a very expensive sport to participate in, it costs schools in the 300 dollar range to outfit a kid. The skimpiest of teams will have at least 30 kids......I'm sure you can do the math. You think the light bill is expensive at your house, what do you reckon it costs to light a Football field for 3-4 hours on Friday night? Officials will cost you 300 bucks a night at the bare minimum. I can guarantee you I've been to Football games where the gate wasn't big enough to pay the officials, much less make any money. Are there schools making money with Football, you bet, and good money too, but there are many schools where Football loses money.
I don't mean to paint an ugly picture about Indiana, Football has grown by leaps and bounds over the last 20 years. Some might even argue it's assuming Basketball's position as the Indiana sport. There's a whole world out here. FYI, in Indiana we have Football playing schools ranging in size from just under 5k, to less than 200.
At the Regional and Semi-State level no body gets anything. All expenses are paid and the rest of it goes to the IHSAA. At the state level schools get some sort of monetary reward, I'd have to check the bulletin to see exactly what the split is.
I'm afraid you missed my point regarding Football being a money maker. Football is a very expensive sport to participate in, it costs schools in the 300 dollar range to outfit a kid. The skimpiest of teams will have at least 30 kids......I'm sure you can do the math. You think the light bill is expensive at your house, what do you reckon it costs to light a Football field for 3-4 hours on Friday night? Officials will cost you 300 bucks a night at the bare minimum. I can guarantee you I've been to Football games where the gate wasn't big enough to pay the officials, much less make any money. Are there schools making money with Football, you bet, and good money too, but there are many schools where Football loses money.
I don't mean to paint an ugly picture about Indiana, Football has grown by leaps and bounds over the last 20 years. Some might even argue it's assuming Basketball's position as the Indiana sport. There's a whole world out here. FYI, in Indiana we have Football playing schools ranging in size from just under 5k, to less than 200.
Every man lives by a code:
1.Always look cool
2.Never get lost
3.If you get lost, look cool
1.Always look cool
2.Never get lost
3.If you get lost, look cool
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slapperdad - Posts: 887
- Joined: Fri May 01, 2009 7:28 pm
I get it slapper. To me it's entertaining to hear football described as a money loser, you think that it's expensive to keep the lights on? Try maintaining a sheet of indoor ice for a hockey team 24/7 and or paying $150-250 an hour to rent ice time for practice. I know people in our AD department have told me that they could fund our entire budget shortfall if we just stopped bleeding money to sudsidize Hockey. But Hockey is #1 here and I think we'd cut math before we cut funding for HS hockey.
- SnocatzDad
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- Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2009 9:04 am
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