North Dakota Preps

Is it me or is the attendance for girls region tournament down from last year and previous years. I have been to region 4 tournament and i don't remember so much seating available each night of the tournament and it looked that way at other girls region tournaments on tv. If so whats the reason for down turn interest for girls basketball. Even this site has had not much actiivity about girls basketball. Is it because it follows boysbasketball and especially after quality of teams and performances seen at state and region levels for boys its hard to watch girls basketball which much different style of basketball. I like to hear what people think on this.

I was at the Region 3 Tournament on Monday and attendance was ok. Last night I watched it on TV due to questionable road conditions and it looked like there was a lot of empty seats in Hazelton. I don't know the answer as to why but I would hazard a guess that a lot of the "casual" fans are getting tired of basketball and don't want to spend the money to go to the tournaments. (Just a guess)

It seems like attendance at the Region 1 tournament is down this year as well. I think by this point of the year, people are getting tired of basketball. They've already been through the entire boys season and feel like it is "over" after the boys state B. I think it really hurt girls basketball when the boys and girls seasons were switched around so that the girls played the later season. Girls basketball interest was hurt when: 1) it switched to winter and 2) they started it two weeks after boys BB.

Not to mention the expense of the post-season. If you are lucky to have both your boys and girls teams play into the last day of regionals, it can get spendy. I feel like the parking lot guy at the Fargo Civic Center is one of my closet friends, even though I have to pay him $3 every time I see him. "Good Luck and I hope your team wins!"

ClassBEast, I agree with your assessment on why girls BB is down in popularity. I'll throw out another possibility - I don't think the overall level of teams is anywhere near as good as it used to be. You've got a few elite teams around the state and then a bunch of teams that can hardly get a shot off before they turn the ball over. It's just not very good basketball to watch.

When the elites play each other it is pretty entertaining. When they don't, it can be almost painful.

I'm just tired if winter driving in general. It feels like it has been an entire month of bad roads.

Hinsa wrote:ClassBEast, I agree with your assessment on why girls BB is down in popularity. I'll throw out another possibility - I don't think the overall level of teams is anywhere near as good as it used to be. You've got a few elite teams around the state and then a bunch of teams that can hardly get a shot off before they turn the ball over. It's just not very good basketball to watch.

When the elites play each other it is pretty entertaining. When they don't, it can be almost painful.

Hinsa, I really agree with you. I am a big high school basketball fan, but I think the level of play has gone down. This is not good since more and more kids are playing traveling ball, but they are not working on basics. Even Class A talent is down. If you watch a game without a roster, it isn't always easy to determine an "elite" player.

I think teaching of fundamentals has gone down since they put the two seasons together of boys basketball and girls basketball. Here's my reasoning for this it put 4,5, and 6 grade basketball to the fall because of only time there would be free time in the gyms. Then in the fall they split season up with girls having first half and boys second half. Now we have about same number of games about 7 or 8 for these kids but its concentrated into 5 to 6 weeks instead of full season. This puts coach with very little coaching and teaching time if you figured it out. Say there are 6 weeks with 4 possible practise times a week but you can figure your going to loose almost week to holidays and other days off in this time so your down to 20days total for practices and games. Take away 8 games and that leaves you at best 12 practices to teach kids fundamentals plus getting them to play together as a team . I also think this 12 practices is high on actual practices. I remember when we had 5and 6 grades teams it mirrored highschool season and we had one game a week but we had week of practices so coach could work on fundamentals and after each game we had a week to work on things we didn't do so well. Also we got to watch older kids at same time as they were playing that was also teaching tool also when we were playing. The traveling teams are okay but i don't see alot of time put into working on fundamentals its more just playing against competition in the off season. Also summer leagues where kids from various schools play each other but its more street type of play i beleive teach alot of bad habits and poor fundamentals that hard to correct when you get back to more orgainized basketball. But kids not getting time when there younger is showing up now in quality of play. The kids now playing were first ones under this system and i think it may be showing up in quality of play today.

Huge crowd in DL tonight for region 4

Region 2 had large contingents from Thompson and HCV, but the Grafton section was nearly empty and MPCG's section was smallish. Lots and lots of open seats.

Hinsa wrote:Region 2 had large contingents from Thompson and HCV, but the Grafton section was nearly empty and MPCG's section was smallish. Lots and lots of open seats.

How much does the Betty hold? There wasn't an open seat at the DL Sportscenter, but I'm thinking its probably smaller too

ndlionsfan wrote:

Hinsa wrote:Region 2 had large contingents from Thompson and HCV, but the Grafton section was nearly empty and MPCG's section was smallish. Lots and lots of open seats.

How much does the Betty hold? There wasn't an open seat at the DL Sportscenter, but I'm thinking its probably smaller too

Betty Englestad Sioux Center website says 3300.

I don't know about the sportcenter, but I would guess close to 3000