Tournament Attendance Tops 1.4 Million
September 17, 2013
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
The 2012-13 school year marked the sixth straight that attendance at Michigan High School Athletic Association postseason tournaments totaled more than 1.43 million fans, with attendance at girls tournaments topping 430,000 for the fourth straight year.
Total attendance for 2012-13 was 1,433,356 fans, with 1,002,663 at boys tournaments and 430,693 spectators at girls tournaments. Attendance is kept for all sports except golf, skiing and tennis, for which admission typically is not charged.
Girls tournament attendance first topped 400,000 for a school year in 2008-09, then rose over 430,000 for the first time the following year. Helping fuel the total in 2012-13 was a record crowd of 25,290 for competitive cheer (District, Regional and Final rounds combined), and also a record attendance of 12,508 for the girls and boys bowling tournament.
Total attendance did dip slightly in 2012-13, down from 1,479,152 the year before, a drop of 3.1 percent and the lowest since 2006-07. However, four sports joined cheer and bowling with attendance increases from 2011-12 – girls basketball up 4.8 percent to 166,153 fans, gymnastics up 16.8 percent to 2,290, team wrestling up 1.2 percent to 28,863 and ice hockey up 6.5 percent with 59,037 fans this past season.
Football again was the most attended tournament for the sixth consecutive year with 397,944 fans in 2012 – although that represented a 7.3 percent drop from the 2011 playoffs. However, the Regional (5.6 percent) and Semifinal (6.3) rounds both saw increases in fans from the previous season.
Similarly, boys basketball again was second in attendance with 318,325 fans, despite a 1.4 percent decrease from 2011-12. However, the District, Regional and Quarterfinal rounds showed a combined increase of 2.4 percent over the previous season. Girls basketball attendance increased in every round from 2011-12 for an overall increase of 4.8 percent. The Finals weekend total, including semifinals and championship games for each class, was 19,003, the highest since 1992-93.
Girls lacrosse total attendance dropped 9.7 percent to 5,009 fans, but still totaled its second most as an MHSAA sport and set records for Semifinals (1,027) and Finals (1,171) attendance. Volleyball attendance (96,151) remained above 96,000 fans for the fourth consecutive year despite falling 3.2 percent from its 2011-12 record high. Girls soccer dropped less than half a percent from 2011-12 to 26,836 fans, but set a Regional round record with 10,574.
Century of School Sports: Let the Celebration Begin
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
August 28, 2024
A milestone is an opportunity to look back, and we’ll surely dip into our history plenty during the 2024-25 school year as the Michigan High School Athletic Association celebrates 100 years of educational athletics.
But an anniversary of this magnitude also provides an ideal opportunity – at an ideal time in MHSAA history – to explain how we provide opportunities for students to participate in sports, and why that work remains vital.
Beginning next week and continuing through our final championship events next spring, we’ll be telling several of these stories as part of our “Century of School Sports” series on MHSAA.com.
School sports have advanced significantly over the last century, of course, but the values we strive to teach in educational athletics have remained consistent – and we’ll detail several of those efforts and how they’ve evolved over the years. There also are more high achievers and difference-makers worthy of recognition than we could ever highlight even during a year-long quest. But we will do our best to tell you about as many as possible.
Perhaps the most valuable lesson we at the East Lansing office learned during the COVID-19 pandemic is that school sports are just as meaningful to communities all over Michigan, and despite any perceived notion they are being pushed to the background by the multitude of non-school sports options that have sprouted over the last few decades.
We care about them enough to make them our life’s work – and we’re excited to tell many stories of what’s been, what we enjoy today and perhaps what’s to come for the next million student-athletes who will learn lifelong lessons studying in our extension of the classroom.