Spectating High School Basketball
Watching High School Sports Has Gotten a Little Depressing
I coach my son’s 5th Grade Basketball Team. Now, to a 5th Grader, attending a High School basketball game is a big deal. It’s the higher end of the social spectrum for 5th grade boys. They’re one of the group. They’re a part of the program. They look for something to do socially, and as options for wholesome, local, non-offensive events for 5th Graders is small, the local High School Basketball game is a prime go-to event. Not to mention, as a player that my son is and as a coach that I am, we get in for free.
The High School Basketball game used to mean somethingfor the High Schoolers too. It was a social event. It was a gathering place where you could cheer on the team, and then meet somewhere after the game or go hang out at someone’s house. You’d enjoy the excitement of the atmosphere and then go get a bite to eat or something. What I’m trying to say is that the game used to be a social gathering for high schoolers.
So I was a bit dismayed when I went to the game on a Friday night and bleachers were largely empty. It was not for the quality of the team; they were in the top three in their conference, and several players for both the home and away teams have college scholarships locked up. It was a sad and subdued atmosphere. The student section for both the home and visiting high school groups were bare empty; there were about as many people playing on the court as there was in the home team’s student section. No student band. A casual indifference among the students that were there, spending as much time just talking with each other while they kept an eye from time to time on the game and the scoreboard. It was a sad and pathetic display of school spirit.
Talking with other parents from other metro cities, this is actually nothing new and a common occurance everywhere. The causes for the dearth of spectators at local high school sporting events are multiple:
High school kids generally are less social in person nowadays than they were 20-30 years ago. They are more comfortable chatting it up on social media or at close friends’ homes than going out of their way to attend a social event.
Cheerleading, previously seen as a derivative activity to the main event, is now it’s own sport, complete with stunt coordination and calculated choreography.
The rise and focus on many other sports, along with an additional focus on women’s sports, has watered down the interest of students; there is just only so much that students can get excited about and engaged in. As a result, they are more discriminant about which events to attend, picking and choosing more selectively what they want to watch.
The pre-game music was a sad mishmash of the same “jock jams” played thirty years ago. It seemed more attuned to appeal to the parents and granparents in the stands than today’s students. If you are a 15 year old in the stands, listening to “Rock and Roll Part II,” “Ready to Go,” or “Good Vibrations” for the billionth time must result in rolling their eyes and saying “whatever Boomer” (even though those are Gen X songs).
They KNOW that to the younger kids, the Basketball game is a big deal. If you are in High School, would you want to go to the same place your younger sibling or little kids go to? It’s like babysitting to them and very unfashionable.
Well, I still like basketball. I really like watching High School and College basketball and when I watch local kids I know around town who are going to be on television in a year playing in college, I want to get a chance to watch them while I can. Many of the reasons above are outside of my control and can’t do much about. However, one thing that I can recommend that is a simple solution to bring in more spectators is to update the playlist during pregame, timeouts and halftime. We don’t need another playing of “Lose Yourself” while announcing the lineups.
So I’m putting it out there to all the PurpleAmericans out there interested in upgrading their local high school sports playlists. I’m calling out to everyone out there who want to turn high school sporting events into fun social activities again. Let’s update the tunes. There are only four rules that are required:
The music has to have an upbeat tempo that gets the crowd excited and moving, and has to be more than just a DJ dance beat with a *thump* *thump* *drop* rhythm to it.
The lyrics have to be PG or at most a soft PG-13.
The song must have been released after 2015, preferably post 2020.
The song cannot be an updated cover version of another song.
Believe it or not, this is more difficult than it looks. Musical tastes have softened a bit since the 1990s and 2000s, or else easily break rule #2 that a high school wouldn’t play it. Looking through my own music collection, there are only maybe a dozen that fit the criteria and some wouldn’t quite work well. The best I could come up with was just three.
Sturgill Simpson, Sing Along
Fitz and the Tantrums, Handclap & The Walker
So PurpleAmericans, in the comments or in an email (PurpleAmericanUnity@gmail.com) I call on you to forward me songs for a High School Sports playlist. I, and the local High School Basketball team are counting on you! I’ll post some of the results in the Weekly Recap on Friday.
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day
High school sporting venues are costly.
In Texas, home to Friday Night Lights and where high school football is king, there are 10 stadiums that cost over $40 million each to build. The most expensive, an 11,000 capacity stadium that opened in 2006 cost $80 million.
Following the Uvalde School District shooting, the district closed the previous elementary school and put in money to the budget to build a whole new school. The cost? A mere $55 million by comparison.
PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject
The opening to the 1990s era “Jock Jams” is still iconic. Michael Buffer crooning :et;s Get Ready to RUMBLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEE!” going right into 2 Unlimited’s “Get Ready 4 This” is still the standard for sporting events. This is what we are up against people.